As time rolls on there’s a shift as spring gives over to summer and trending now is the season for cute babies: parenting roles come to the fore. There is much activity in our backyard with the chirps and cheeps from the pair of feisty of wagtails and their chicks. This year they built their nest craftily anchored to a trellis supporting a jasmine creeper. Two rotund chicks have fledged but the parents will continue feeding them until they are self sufficient.
Other nesting pairs are sitting (though fortunately not in the backyard) or guarding nest spaces and like a maiden aunt i am anxiously awaiting results. On the left, is the spotted thick-knees which have previously featured here in this blog. By scoping out the nest with binoculars when the parents change sittings I can make out that there are two eggs.
Ostrich in his black night attire is inconguously sitting in broad daylight, which rather debunks the theory that the female with her drab colouring is better camouflaged for duty during the day. They go for big broods and lay between 15 – 20 eggs.
The last on the right, is the Kittlitz plover, a shy retiring, little bird.
Hopefully, soon I will have more to report on the happy flutter of new arrivals.
Nature on the Edge 
Sweet – I love nesting success! I had no idea ostriches lay so many eggs. One would think that the world would be over run with them. I expect there must be some predation cutting down the numbers?
It’s a tough being a fledgling at this time of year as the wind can be galeforce, so all the more sweet the success 🙂 Ostriches – yes baboons love to raid their nests for the eggs, but we humans are the big culprits – farming them for their meat / leather etc.
I enjoy watching the chicks grow up – our garden is aflutter with young weavers at the moment.
Isn’t it amazing how quickly they become accomplished at flying … clever little creatures.
I’m surprised by the ostrich numbers, I wonder how many survive?
Yes you wouldn’t think they’d be a sought after meal … (the bird that is) .. but predators do go for them and baboons love to raid their nests for the eggs. Humans are the biggest culprits… though they’re farmed for their meat these days rather than shot at for sport. Not sure of their survival rate – some years whole herds succumb to illness – such as avian flu, but guessing this is an evolutionary need for turning out numbers.