The 2 chicklets are spending their days like they should at age 36 days: work out, sleeping, preening and eating! They are flapping their wings and training their flightmuscles. They are a lot at the edge of the nestbox watching their parents high up in the sky.
They still have a lot of down under their wings and some on back and head. They are not ready yet to fly. They are still being fed as well bij their parents. They are still babybirds of prey.
Next stage will be hopping on the ridge in front of the nestbox, and flapping, preening and enjoying the view. After that they will step on the ledge and the roof of the nextbox. Fledging will be possible from day 38. But more likely from day 40. Those 2 are not very eager to take that next step yet.
All this makes what really happened to nr 3 someting to worry about. Until now I have not seen any pic of nr 3 branching on the ledge. And I do autocapture everything. It would be perfectly normal that if he would be somewhere on the ledge that this one would have stopped by to lure his brothers out of the nestbox, or jumping on the roof of the box. But no sign of him.
It is useless to pretend everything is normal, cause it is not.
The fact that nr 3 has not shown himself makes it even more probable that he was blown of the edge of the box when flapping his wings. A 34 day old juvenile does not fly away yet. He is not ready to do so. Normally he has 6 more days growing ahead to be able to fledge savely.
So he might have been blown overboard and dropped down to the ground just before darkness set in on thursday night. The parents will have heard him sqauwking and protected him. They will keep feeding a stranded juvie as well.
I do hope people at the Alcoa plant will look out for him. And help a hand when he is in trouble. Let´s hope he will show himself in a few days time. So we know he is save.
