26/06/2024

Bad news: I’m afraid there won’t be a livestream this year. I have 3 cameras that can be live steamed but 2 of them were in the boxes where the eggs were thrown out (see news 26/06/24) so are now empty and the third refuses live stream despite my best efforts. Instead, I’ll try to post regular picture and videos of progress with the 3 remaining broods on the NEWS page.

14/08/2023

The last of this year’s chicks fledged a couple of days ago so the live stream has now ended until next year – hope you enjoyed it!

06/08/2023

Now that the chicks in boxes 2 and 4 have fledged, I’m focusing the remaining days of this years live feed on box 3 with its 2 chicks. Unfortunately, the fault mentioned below still remains.

01/06/2023

A couple of people have pointed out that the camera in box 3 (bottom left of the screen) is fine during the daytime but alternates between colour (daylight) and black and white (infra red) at night. I’ve contacted the camera suppliers and they suspect it’s a fault with the camera so there’s nothing I can do to correct this until the bird have left in late July/early August.

29/05/2023

Last year I managed to live stream what was going on in one of the nest boxes on our house – box 2. This year in a triumph of persistence over technology, I’ve got cameras fitted and working in THREE boxes – nos. 2, 3 & 4. – and will be posting highlights from each as the season progresses.

Scroll down for 2022 ‘edited highlights’

As the chicks have now fledged, the live stream looked like the screenshot above 24/7 – more interesting than most daytime TV but still not all that rivetting!

So I have ended the live stream for this year – all being well it will be back in May 2023.

See below for edited highlights of what’s been going on over the last couple of months.

27-07-22

As predicted, the chicks have now fledged – two on Sunday morning (24th) and the last one on Monday. This left the parents to have a rest and feed up before heading south themselves. One adult left on Tuesday morning, leaving the second one on its own in a now very quiet and uncrowded nest box:

This one itself left early this morning:

All being well see them next year!!

24-07-22

In recent days some ‘muck’ has appeared on the camera lens making the view rather blurred. Unfortunately, the young are now too near fledging to disturb them to clean the lens without risking them flying the nest too soon so the blurred view will have to stay.

They are now VERY close to fledging so there have been some interesting goings on in the box:

Five large birds in one small nest box is quite a squeeze:

Prior to fledging, the young birds do ‘wing press ups’ to strengthen their flying muscles:

07-07-22

The film star chicks in Box 2 have been growing at an incredible speed and I reckon now weigh as much as (or perhaps slightly more than) their parents. This means feeding time is even more frenetic than before:

28-06-22

Anyone who has watched this live feed will know that, most of the time, not much happens. The chicks are now around 2 weeks old and are left alone by their parents most of the time as they are out collecting flying insects to feed them. During this time the chicks appear to be argely asleep. But then, every half hour or so, one of the parents returns and the chicks go into what can only be desvribed as a feeding frenzy! I managed to record this moment a couple of days ago so you can now see the exciting bit without having to sit through a lengthly period of inactivity.

The first 10 seconds or so is the calm before the storm and then the parent arrives……..

13-06-22

Apologies to anyone who tried to look at the live stream yesterday or earlier today. Having run perfectly for over a fortnight it waited until the weekend, when we were in Yorkshire for a wedding, to crash. Whilst I’m sure it is theoretically possible to restart the stream remotely, I have yet to work out how to do it, so it only became live again when we got home this afternoon.

Check back here soon for more highlights!

31-05-22

The great news is the adults are now incubating THREE eggs which should hatch in about a fortnight’s time. 3 eggs is unusual for swifts who normally only lay 2 so maybe these birds think it’s a good year. Let’s hope so!

If you’ve watched this live stream for more than a few seconds you will have realised that, most of the time at the moment, not much is happening. In fact, until the bird incubating the eggs moves, it’s hard to tell whether the picture is actually live.

However, two things are happening regularly and I’ve managed to capture both:

Frantic preening:

And, about once an hour, shift change:

Both birds seem to contribute fairly equally to incubating the eggs spending half their time doing that and the other half on the wing feeding