Feeding Frenzy

When we moved into our house in 2015, I hung a little nestbox under the carport roof. It‘s the kind of niche that robins and other garden birds are looking for, but it took them a while to accept it. This year it gets used for the first time. A Black Redstart family has moved in in early May, and now their five chicks are almost ready to fledge.

The female did all the incubating on her own, and sometimes I wasn’t sure if the male was still around at all. But ever since the chicks hatched, he has helped feeding the many hungry mouths (or rather beaks). 

The black male is very shy, and I didn’t manage to get his photo yet. But in the main blip you see the female on her way to the nest, with a beak full of food. She only had enough for one chick, and the other four still begged with wide open beaks after she flew away.

In the extra you see all five chicks. To get this picture took me many tries, as one of them always seems to hide behind the others.