Time is passing and it’s not always possible to be at the nest when significant things happen. That’s particularly true of late, so it was no surprise to happen by the Block of Flats the other day to find that our chick had taken wing!

It had been obvious that this was on the cards, given her mature appearance, fully fledged, and her vigorous wing-flapping exercises. And she chose the same location her predecessors had used — although now it’s a couple of charred stumps, not the tall, Y-shaped tree trunk they enjoyed.

Here she does a spot of grooming — something she has been doing since her big-girl feathers started emerging and she set about vigorously removing the fluffy down that remained.

She also hopped, with one big flap of wings, to another portion of the charred stump she’d flown to. Of course I missed that moment.

When that charred stump was still a much bigger stump, I captured a juvenile kestrel from the same nest practicing its flying chops.

I went by this afternoon to see if there was any sign of the chick, but there wasn’t: the nest hole showed no sign of occupancy and the perching stump was empty. There was a kestrel high up in the branches of the Block of Flats, but at that distance, it wasn’t possible to tell if this was a parent or the nearly-grown offspring. So the natural cycle goes.