Well this is not really going the way I had imagined or indeed hoped it would. I’d envisioned an account of the dedicated Kestrel parents striving to raise three vigorous offspring; that idea took a dent when the third and presumably weakest chick disappeared from the nest. And today there’s no point sugar-coating it: when I checked yesterday, only one chick remained.

It took a while to work this out and I spent the time watching as both parents shuttled back and forth, delivering fresh lizards; yes, it became clear — only one chick was there to receive them.

Now, I’m sure birds of prey don’t mourn like people do; it’s just interesting to try to understand what this drastically reduced brood means to the kestrels. On the one hand, they may see that three is a better result in turn of survival rate than one; on the other, it’s much easier to keep one chick fed than three — which improves that particular bird’s chances of surviving. There’s no way of knowing.

And the last remaining chick? From the pics I took the other day, it looks like it’s getting more to eat than it can handle. I snapped a long sequence of images that will take a while to process, but they’ll be here soon. Let’s just hope that being the sole recipient of all the food means this last chick has a proportionately greater chance of achieving adulthood.