#5 Fledges at 30 Days

#5 alone in the nest box at 5:30am on May 26, while a robin chirps outside:

I've worried about #5 from the beginning because the common understanding of nest politics is that the smallest, weakest, youngest of chicks will not get as much food as the others, will get picked on by the others, possibly even killed by the others, and one way or another, is likely to die long before the possibility of fledging. With our owls, however, we never saw a single indication of aggression toward #5 from any of his siblings, and the parents seemed to make a concerted effort to locate him during the feeding hullabaloo to make sure he got his share of moth, cockroach, and sparrow. 

So, even though we thought he wasn't set up for success, on the evening after all his siblings launched, younger, smaller, weaker #5 followed, leaping from the box at dusk, flying like a pro, into the nearby trees to join his family.

Here, he sits in the hole for many minutes, which I've edited out, chirping faintly while his parents call to him from the trees, and finally fledges with a simple, uneventful fwoop. And that is that.

Four of the Owlets Fledge at 31 Days

There is very little usable video at this point because the owlets have bumped the camera even more, and there are a couple of videos where it looks like the rowdy little things have actually been hanging from the camera, which means that on the momentous, much awaited night of fledging, there is pretty much nothing to show. The videos at this point are more useful for sound than anything. Sound alone, however, does tell the story: The oldest four owlets took their leaps out into the world at dusk on May 25, at 31 days of age.

Compared to the chaos and clamor of last year's fledge, this year's was positively anticlimactic. Each of the owlets' first flight was as if well practiced. No flailing, no falling, no scrabbling and scraping and languishing on the ground for minutes at a time while neighborhood cats lurk in the shadows. There was some drama, though, in that little #5, two days younger than his/her siblings, stayed behind, alone in the box, not yet ready to take the big leap into adult life. Try - JUST TRY! - not to anthropomorphize* as you listen to these lonely* little chirps:

Once the owlets are out of the nest box, they and the parents remain in the immediate neighborhood for a few more weeks, during which time the parents feed them in the trees, teach them to hunt, and try to protect them from predators. Despite having four of her babies to keep track of out in the trees (with Boyle's help, of course), DerOwl Hannah came back into the box to feed #5 through that last night:

Owlets at 30 and 28 Days

Half-asleep preening:

A parent checks in on the owlets, and one owlet works at a scrap of what looks like a wing:

A daylight view of some sweet faces:

An owlet discoing at something on the floor, then pouncing on it, while his/her sibling does an interesting throat thing:

An owlet, with pupils dilating, really checking out the camera, and leaping at it:

Owlets at 29 and 27 Days

It's all fun and games until someone bumps the nest cam. As mentioned in a previous post, the owlets are bouncing off the walls and in the process, the camera has been bumped. The resulting videos are fewer in number and poorer in quality, so we've skipped a few days for lack of anything worth sharing.

Preening (at the very end of this clip):

Clamoring for access to the hole: