[mou] Chickadee second brood

[Liz Stanley]

I sent out a link earlier to my chickadee nest box camera
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFpNbBn5UBc in case you missed it!)
Someone from another forum responded and said that a second brood is rare
for chickadees, with only about 5% of pairs attempting second broods, and
that they aren't well documented. This is definitely a second brood and
not a replacement, since the first brood fledged (successfully as far as I
could tell) on June 4. I expected that bluebirds would move into the box
afterward, since that's what happened last year. Sometime during the week
after the first brood fledged, I noticed a new nest and then 5 eggs
appeared. That's when I decided to put up the camera. The nest is much
shallower than I've seen in the past, and usually I would expect closer to
10 eggs. The process of nest building and egg laying seemed to move much
more quickly than I've previously observed. I'll keep posting new videos
as interesting things happen (right now it's pretty much all the same -
just a lot of preening, stretching and snoozing.)


-- 
Liz
liz at lizstanley.com
Backyard weather and feedercam: http://www.overlookcircle.org/
Photo gallery: http://www.pbase.com/gymell/liz_favorites