There has been some extremely interesting and rare birds in the West of England this weekend. Bee-eaters, Whiskered Tern and Short-toed Eagle not to mention the Ross's Gull. All birds that I would love to add to my galleries, or see again but you can't be in two places at once so I continued with what I had enjoyed so much yesterday and that was photographing at the nest of a lovely pair of Lesser Redpoll.

If you look back at my previous post you can read about how I managed to have the great pleasure of photographing at Lesser Redpoll nest. Today I made my way out to the site and set up in front of the gorse bush where a nest contained five healthy juvenile birds. I quickly checked that the birds were OK and had survived the last 24 hours, I was pleased to see them. . Before I left yesterday I had discovered that if I positioned the tripod very low and in the exact spot, I had a clear view to the nest which is  basically a cup in the fork of the bush and quite high up. I used cam netting and vegetation from the vicinity to fashion a crude, but very effective hide and then tucked myself in with a gillie suite hood on just to make sure.  I had  great view of the chicks in the nest and It was only a matter of minutes before the female came in to the bush, called for a while from on top (see above) and then approached the nest carefully and quietly  from beneath.

I could see when she came in that she wasn't carrying anything in the beak and at first, I was confused but when I saw her feeding the chicks I could clearly see, as the photo shows, that she was actually regurgitating seeds and then feeding them in an almost frenzied manner. After just a few seconds she picked up a faecal sack and flew off, returning just 10 seconds or so later to pick up another. This is interesting behaviour. I had watched the chicks deliberately defecate on the edge of the nest rim. The parents then remove this faeces away from the nest not only to keep it clean but to remove any evidence of chicks.  

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You can rest assured that  absolutely no disturbance has been caused to this nest.  Both parents were coming to feed the youngsters regularly and had they  been disturbed this would not be the case. I want to reiterate that I am licensed by Natural England to photograph Schedule 1. birds at the nest site. All of these photographs were taken with due consideration to the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.