Carrion Crow (Corvus corone corone)

This morning the main man of the West Cornwall Ringing Group Mark Grantham was able to take some time out of his busy schedule to check nests with me at Stithians for ringing. The nest boxes were all over the place with some nests not having progressed at all with no eggs, two sets had hatched but were too small to ring, one box that had eggs was found empty, a Great Tit box was just a mystery but - the Corvids did us proud. From 12 eggs 9 are still going strong and here are some images

This grumpy looking Crow came out of the first nest with three others

and a bit of a scene when they were put back

Here's Mark extracting from another nest overlooking the reservoir

for those not as knowledgeable in nesting as others the bird below (2 images) is what we call "feathers short" and this information is used to age the chicks. By looking at the quills that form the flight feathers you can see the black feathers just emerging from the end of the quills to form the primaries. If it was just quills then it's "in pin". As birds grow so do the feathers thus becoming feathers medium and onto feathers large when the bird will be near fledging

Just one more note on Stithians nest boxes - one of them holds my largest ever clutch - Blue Tit on 11 eggs

Below are some of the ten chicks "in pin" currently residing in my parents garden nest box

Don't forget to check out Mark's blog which can be found down the right hand side.....