Well, here's the weekly update. It's hard to believe that this bird was only a small puffball a little over a month ago!! (See first post for how this started).

The bird is now very alert and getting protective of his (her?) territory, which right now extends to the edge of the nest. A couple of times I reached in to get a good closeup and the bird really got brave. I am brave also, but not stupid.

My falconer friend has a permanent scar on his face from a Northern Goshawk he once had - it decided to jump on his face as he was changing some papers near it's perch. I have also seen that once these birds get their talons dug in to something, they don't come back out easily (just ask any rabbit!).



After a short while it got a little more comfortable with me being there.



I ended up being able to get a couple of good closeup pics - too bad that there was a small feather stuck to it's beak - it looks the same as many of the songbird feathers that were in the nest today.







Here's the only pic I took of the inside of the Kestrel box I put up this year. There were originally 5 eggs. Last week, there were 4 chicks and 1 egg in the corner. This week, there are 4 chicks and no sign of the other egg (though I didn't dig through the wood shavings to see if it was there). It was about 80 degrees and sunny here today, so the inside of this box smelled like a chicken coop!!

The chicks are in focus, just really fuzzy, so not really much to look at. They were panting heavily and very groggy, so I wasn't able to get any decent pics. Maybe next week.