Day 30 - 11th day in chick's life. Highlights.

[@shannonspage9360]

The mom sitting on this one giant sized chick at the very end of the video was rather cute. This baby bird is speed growing for sure.

[@sggk1632]

どんだけウンコ食うんだよw

[@ch4nfu]

Does the male not bring any food or be around?

[@backyardnature101]

Looks like the male showed up only once when mother was sitting on the egg.

[@Cy93]

@@backyardnature101 Lazy ass dad.

[@shannonspage9360]

Yea it’s strange only saw a male blackbird for a few seconds in one of the videos when she was still sitting on the egg. There was no male seen at all for the clutch before this one that all died. The pair will typically have 3-4 clutches during the season and the male helps with the feeding of the chicks. But the fledged chicks will sometimes follow the parent birds around for several weeks after leaving the nest. The previous clutch that died would have likely been the second clutch for the season. Either the male died at some point before the last clutch hatching or they could have had an unusually large first clutch and the dad had trouble ditching or shooing off the first clutch of fledgling chicks and mom was stuck trying to feed all four of the previous clutch which ended bad. One chick this time though seems to be no problem for mom to keep up with and it likely about around the warmest part of the year that this chick didn’t get chilled too much with mom not being able to brood this chick for the first few days until the downy feathers grew. But it seems with this clutch she planned for it to be solo by only laying two eggs and not replacing the second one when it broke right before she started incubating them. It kinda interesting though because both parents are usually involved with feeding the chicks. Sometimes it’s just the male feeding them the first few days if it is still in the beginning of the season and it’s chilly still so mom can sit on them and get them past the half way point when they get the downy feathers and they can keep themselves warm during the day, then both parents are going all day back and forth with food. These little birds get bossy and demanding as you can see. With a nest full of them they get rather feisty.

[@ch4nfu]

@@shannonspage9360 Thank you so much for this reply. Very informative 🙏

[@backyardnature101]

@@shannonspage9360 you seem to know quite a lot about these birds :) and have good observations. A contextual detail is that the clutch when the chicks died it was indeed the coldest time of the season for the birds to lay eggs. Then I believe they tried to nest in the hedge not too high from the ground. I did not record that, but it appeared that the clutch was destroyed early in the process. And this one on the video is the 3rd one. The last for the season. And happened to be the hottest. At times you could see the mother and the chick would sit with the opened beaks due to too much heat in the shed.