With so much of my time focused on the tawnies at Yew View, I had failed to notice a pied wagtail once again, take up residence in one of the swallow ups upstairs in the stable block. I heard the chicks and crept up to look. I was not sure what species they were and decided to pop the little Vivotek cam on them. I have a long line of cable up there and brackets set near the swallow cups. Within a minute, I had the camera set up and returned down the ladder to watch who came back to feed them.
I did not wait long…. within 30 seconds a pied wagtail appeared, its beak crammed with insects! With 4 hungry mouths to feed, these wagtails are all over the site collecting food. I watched them in the lily pads on the ornamental pond!
These chicks are probably a couple of weeks old so we may only get a week’s footage from this camera, but it will be great to watch.
The swallows have started to nest again too. I have cams set up on a number of cups and this female went back to the nest cup I filmed last year. A quick iphone shot revealed she had already laid 5 beautiful speckled eggs on a bed of feathers.
I have a nestbox cam and small lighting unit attached to a sensor, set up on the swallow cups permanently. When the swallows decide which cup they are using, I also set the Vivotek HD cam up there.
I am always totally in awe of these delicate little light-weights who fly all the way from Africa to return to this site each year.
It will lovely to, once again, document this family’s life for a few weeks…..