And it was all going so well...

[jacey]

Here's the last part of the mistle thrush story, but it's not a happy ending, I'm afraid.

Three very beaky and healthy chicks in the nest on 21st June.
At this point I guess they were each the size of a small sparrow and very perky.
And Mum was hopping back and forth feeding them, with dad hovering nearby most of the time - and taking his turn


And then the rain set in so mum hunkered down over the nest and fluffed herself out to cover it.


But yesterday afternoon BB found a chick in the middle of the lawn. No idea how it got there. It may have fallen or been pushed out of the nest and had enough life in it to get that far, or it may have been snatched by a predator and dropped. My money's on the former, since there didn't seem to be any blood.

And then there were two.


Mum was sitting tight yesterday afternoon.


But around six p.m. something was definitely upsetting both parent birds. They were agitated and flying round. A couple of times they tried to divebomb the living room window (below the nest) as we looked out. I checked the nest around six this morning and mum was sitting happily, but when I got up at nine she was off the nest and the chicks were horribly still. I've always been able to see them moving before, not just fluttering but breathing, but this time there was no sign of  life. There was a thrush in the garden and I could see the shadow of one on the roof ridge, but they weren't coming close. I checked again ten minutes later and the chicks were in exactly the same position.

Dead. 25th June 2013.


I don't know what killed them. maybe it was the unseasonal cold, wet and windy weather that chilled them while Mum was away foraging. Perhaps with only two chicks in the nest they couldn't maintain warmth for very long. I've really no idea, but sad as it is that's the way nature works.

I'm sorry the clutch failed. The way things were going on I figured she'd end up with one chick, but I didn't expect her to lose all of them. As you can see they were just beginning to get a few feathers, but they were still very vulnerable.
By ten this morning there was no sign of thrushes in the garden at all. BB says he'll give it until tomorrow and then get out the ladder and remove the nest and the dead chicks from the windowsill.

Mistle thrush chicks RIP

Comments

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

How sad. It's like a Victorian tragedy. :(

Have you seen any of the Springwatch on TV? They were reporting similar stories amongst the successes, so it seems that your thrushes were just some of the unlucky ones.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

No, I haven't seen springwatch, but I watched David Attenborough's Birds thing on youtube just last night - at least the egg episode and the chick one and it seems that multiple eggs is just an insurance policy and often only a single chick will survive. Our nest was already down from five eggs to four chicks to three chicks to two chicks.

[teriegarrison.livejournal.com]

Awwwww. It's sad, but it's also the natural way of things. I've been watching (and photographing) a family of swans at one of the duck ponds I walk past frequently, and every week one of the babies 'goes missing'. Started at 7 and now down to 4. Again, sad, but as a friend said, if that didn't happen, we'd be overrun with swans in no time. Also? Foxes gotta eat, too.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

If we had to guess, we'd say "weather." Nest failures aren't rare, although people don't often have as good a view of the tragedy as this. We had a chickadee nest fail in a hollow right outside our sunporch a few years back, stretch of cold wet weather in late May or early June. We still have lots of chickadees. Mother Nature is profligate . . .

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I think you're right. It's been awfully cold and wet for June.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Oh, damn. Yeah, nature, yadda but I still feel sad. (I am still sad over a local pair of mallards abandoning their nest of five ducklings when the neighbor's cat started stalking the mother.)

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I know. You want to do something, but you know you can't.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Oh, that's very sad. Poor little things.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

Poor thrushes. I'm sorry.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

How sad after all that time!

[maeve-the-red.livejournal.com]

Bummer. But it must have been amazing - albeit distressing at the end - to get so close to nature with your thrush family.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Actually it was amazing. I learned a lot - and became quite invested in the progress of this little family. The previous mistle thrush nesting on the windowsill in the yard wasn't in a position where we could see into the nest and so we watched from below. I'm guessing that the stage the first thrush family was at when we first began to see the (one) chick bobbing up from the depths of the nest to be fed was probably not far from the same stage as these chicks were at. So I have seen the whole process, only via two different families. The first chick seemed to go from bobbing up, beak open for food, to being fully feathered and flying the nest in about a week. The speed of development was astonishing.

[ferlonda.livejournal.com]

Well... darn.

Thanks for posting the pictures and story, though. I've been really enjoying reading about the birds and the photos were neat.

Maybe next time Mr. and Mrs. Thrush will be successful.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

That's terribly sad. I've heard that young birds find endless cold wet weather very difficult to cope with and often die of cold.

There weren't enough thrushes in the world already, and now we've lost some more:-(