Goldcrest, Nesting Update.
Further to my earlier post and photograph of a Goldcrest taking a feather to line the nest, I thought an update was in order. I very much enjoyed watching and photographing their breeding attempt from nest building through to the chicks fledging - yes, they were successful !
You can see from this photograph how hard working the parent birds were. With a beak full of food and looking rather bedraggled, it’s on the way to feed the ever hungry growing brood. They can have up to 12 young and it is a constant search for insects to keep them well fed. They never stop.
I did a quick calculation, for the feeding part of the process alone, based on what I witnessed.
On average =
Each parent visits their nest 10 times/hour = 20
So 17 hours per day for 17 days from chicks hatching to fledging = 20 X 17 X 17
That is nearly 6,000 feeding visits !
I took the photograph above when the chicks were about half grown and I can count at least 35 prey items, ranging from tiny aphids, midges and caterpillars, held in the tireless Goldcrest’s beak. I think this number is a good average because food items vary in size throughout the process.
This means that the parents needed to find and collect -
35 Items X 6,000 visits
= 210,000 prey items in just over 2 weeks !
Of course they still needed to sustain themselves too, so, you could round it up to a Quarter of a million prey items needed to be found and collected !
The following two weeks would involve more feeding of the fledglings before they were independent.
As if this wasn’t enough, they will often do it all again and have a second brood.
Unbelievable really !
Yes they are hard working alright. No wonder this tiny little bird looks “bedraggled”
Thank you for having a look at my photos. Comments or faves are very welcome and much appreciated.
Goldcrest, Nesting Update.
Further to my earlier post and photograph of a Goldcrest taking a feather to line the nest, I thought an update was in order. I very much enjoyed watching and photographing their breeding attempt from nest building through to the chicks fledging - yes, they were successful !
You can see from this photograph how hard working the parent birds were. With a beak full of food and looking rather bedraggled, it’s on the way to feed the ever hungry growing brood. They can have up to 12 young and it is a constant search for insects to keep them well fed. They never stop.
I did a quick calculation, for the feeding part of the process alone, based on what I witnessed.
On average =
Each parent visits their nest 10 times/hour = 20
So 17 hours per day for 17 days from chicks hatching to fledging = 20 X 17 X 17
That is nearly 6,000 feeding visits !
I took the photograph above when the chicks were about half grown and I can count at least 35 prey items, ranging from tiny aphids, midges and caterpillars, held in the tireless Goldcrest’s beak. I think this number is a good average because food items vary in size throughout the process.
This means that the parents needed to find and collect -
35 Items X 6,000 visits
= 210,000 prey items in just over 2 weeks !
Of course they still needed to sustain themselves too, so, you could round it up to a Quarter of a million prey items needed to be found and collected !
The following two weeks would involve more feeding of the fledglings before they were independent.
As if this wasn’t enough, they will often do it all again and have a second brood.
Unbelievable really !
Yes they are hard working alright. No wonder this tiny little bird looks “bedraggled”
Thank you for having a look at my photos. Comments or faves are very welcome and much appreciated.