Not Happy!

This tiny chick was told by its parents that the world outside the box was thick with lovely juicy grubs. But it flew the nest box this afternoon, landed in the fence and couldn't find even one little grub! (Until Mummy/Daddy arrived with some little green wiggly thing!)
For the last few days we have been carefully watching our nest box and it's load of baby blue tits. We have learned to distinguish the parents calls; " look out, I'm coming in" or " stay quiet, there's a big bad bird about". The parents would even chitter at us if we were in the road otherwise they got pretty used to us and just zoomed right over our heads.
However, this afternoon one chick had been peering our quite a bit and the parents had been trying to coax/tempt/bribe it out with offerings of food. As we were talking over the fence with our neighbour, one chick suddenly squeezed out of the box, hung on for a second then launched itself into space, flapping frantically if erratically, and made it all the way to the hedge and comparative safety. We barely had time to cheer when number two popped out and crash landed on our neighbour's roof. A further five followed fairly quickly, scattering themselves around. The parents were most solicitous, checking out the whereabouts of all the chicks and shepherding them to safety.
And Rona was kept indoors while all this was going on just in case she got too "interested".
All is now quiet and we at least have the back garden back for our own use again!

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