Well, three of the four nestlings fledged this morning. Unfortunately, the parents were not willing for me to be there during this phase of their training. I was able to photograph mama from behind my storm door, but she just sat on the railing until I walked away from the door (blurry picture taken through Plexiglas attached).
Through the venetian blind hanging on the front window, however, I was able to observe flight training. It consisted of mama standing a foot or so upwind of the nest, spreading her wings, and vocalizing something to the nestlings.
The first nestling then stood on the nest facing upwind and spread its wings, apparently feeling the way its wings interacted with the air. This lasted about half a minute or so. Then it sort of hopped into the air, banged its head on the porch roof, and clumsily fluttered down and landed vertically on the porch railing.
It shook its head as if shaking off the bump from the collision with the ceiling, and spread its wings again, playing with the air, until taking off into a gentle gust of breeze. It gracefully but weakly flew about 20 feet and landed on the grass, where it hopped around for a while until mama came to meet it, and led it to the brook (probably to teach it how to find its own worms).
It took two legs of flight for the fledgling to make it to the brook, which is about 50 or 60 feet away. Its flight was graceful, but those flight muscles had never been used before today. But after a while it reappeared and flew back to the porch railing in one leg, and sat on the railing by my door.
I walked out onto the porch hoping to take a picture of the fledgling. It wasn't afraid of me at all at first, and actually took a couple of hops toward me on the railing. But then one of the parents yelled at it, and it flew away.
The parents tolerated me -- and maybe even considered me useful as a predator repellent -- while the babies were eggs and nestlings. But now that they've fledged, they have to learn survival skills -- and avoiding humans and other animals with forward-facing eyes is part of that training.
Oddly enough, the parents don't seem to care if I get close to the one remaining nestling (who is active and alert, but not quite ready to fledge). But they warned off the fledglings from getting close to me. They also warned them away from my neighbor, and his cat, and presumably other things judging by the cacophony of warnings ringing through the air.
One or the other seems to always have both the nest and the fledglings in sight, and when the fledglings approach something that could be dangerous to them, they vocalize and warn them away.
For their part, the fledglings seem to be alternating between trips to the brook with one or the other parent (at which point I lose sight of them behind the shrubbery), and exercising their flight muscles by taking longer and longer flights from tree to tree, occasionally coming down to land in the grass and poke around, presumably for worms or bugs. Unlike my own flight training, takeoffs and landings seem to be natural to the fledglings. Developing strength for distance is what they work on.
Unfortunately (for me), the fledglings will no longer let me close enough to get pictures of them. They had no fear of me this morning, but now they have learned from their parents that humans are a threat, and they fly away. All it took was one lesson. They're quick studies.
It will be very interesting to see whether the parents use the same nest again. They usually don't unless they consider it to have been a highly successful one. In that case, they sometimes tidy up and install a new floor, and mama starts laying eggs again as soon as the last nestling has fledged.
This nest would qualify in one way: All four eggs survived to fledge. But on the other hand, there was the problem of the annoying, bearded guy climbing into the rafters to take pictures. I'm curious what their decision will be.
If they do re-use it, I may try to rig some sort of remote-control camera up in the rafters.
-Rich