Fledglings

Today is a day in town, so I am typing this up from our brilliant local library, for such a small comunity Kirkwall library really is great, and the archives section upstairs is amazing, the sheer quantity of records they have is unbelievable.

I am hoping whist I am in town I won't miss our fledgling hooded crows leaving us. A few weeks back a pair began building and then sitting on a nest in one of our trees, brave of them as the nest is only around 9' off the ground. Then early one morning around 6am I heard one of the crows going crackers outside, and thought "Oh %$£&*^ poppy is up the blooming tree!!", so I leaps out of bed, goes running out the back door in no more than a tiny nighty and slippers to find popps trotting towards me with a new hatched baby in her jaws :(

Well I took it off her and it was still alive and headed to the tree, only for our poppy to come out of the undergrowth with another, also alive!

So there is me climbing up a tree flashing far too much body at the crack of dawn, hoping the farmer isn't out early for some reason, placing baby birds back in the nest and getting a lecture form the parent birds lol
Fortunately the chicks survived, and for the past few weeks as they have been growing, everytime poppy goes in the garden she gets mobbed by the parents, consequently she has spent a lot of time indoors, but serve her right I should think !

Now the chicks are leaving the nest and have been learing how to fly, one is more advanced than the other, but they are both managing to get up on the barn roofs, so not long now I should think. I took the opputunity to take a couple of snaps of one of them the other day, but I made a sharp exit as mummy crow was getting rather upset with me.
Well my time on the computer here is nearly up, time to go do the rest of the shopping before the bus home with hubby later. TTFN xx