It has been an amazing month at Winnall Moors with all 7 of the Kingfisher eggs hatching, and successfully fledging yesterday. As predicted the eggs hatched on the 12th May and grew rapidly over the nest few weeks being fed regularly by the parents. The female bird did the majority of the brooding, sitting on the chicks to keep them warm day and night. On cold and rainy days the male bird was also more keen to help with the brooding, and often tried to edge the female off the nest so that he could take a turn in the relative warm and dry of the nest chamber and let the female catch some fish for the young. However, this tactic rarely seemed to work and the male even resorted to sharing the nest with the female and young birds during cooler and wetter nights in mid May. This behaviour has rarely been recorded before and is thought to be quite unusual as Kingfishers are not very social birds.
The birds were ringed on the 24th May by Hampshire Wildlife Trust staff Martin De Retuerto ,a licensed bird ringer, so that we can gain more scientific knowledge about Kingfishers, including survival rates of the young and were the birds travel to establish territories amongst much else.
Newly hatched kingfisher chicks.
Kingfisher chicks awaiting their first feed.
And below Dad comes in to the nest chamber to feed the chicks whilst Mum watches on.
And here are some links with highlights of the action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAXq_Y4jQoE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHCafqZxvn0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_wNu8S76Sc
And lastly here is an adult bird diving and preening:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cu09Lmmvqz8
The next few days will be critical for the young kingfishers as the parents will only continue to feed them for the next 2 to 4 days before beginning to concentrate on their next brood. It is essential that the young birds teach themselves how to fish during this time or they will starve. Survival rates for newly fledged birds are very low with perhaps only half surviving more than a week and only 1 or 2 making it through the winter.
In non Kingfisher news, there are many other birds nesting close to the Kingfisher nest. Wrens have made their nest of moss in the same root plate that the Kingfishers have used, just a couple of feet above the Kingfisher entrance hole. There is also a Nuthatch nest 10 yards up stream of the Kingfisher nest, they have used an artificial bat roost to nest in. Swans nested on the ground a few yards from the Nuthatches and lastly Blue Tits have used one of the nest boxes we put up in early March. It has most definitely been a busy Spring for the birds on Winnall Moors.
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