Here is a short clip of two hand-reared chough chicks being fed. The chicks continued to feed like this for almost two minutes, and will do so every two hours for the next four weeks, when they will fledge.
The two chicks were taken from nest 2, after it became apparent they were falling behind their older siblings. The smaller birds were simply being swamped by their older brothers or sisters, and were not putting on any weight.
If we had left these two, they would almost certainly have perished. It’s a small but tough world in a chough nest box.
We had a couple of worrying days, but then the chicks began to recover and put on weight. They have now grown from 22 and 15 grams, to 187 and 181 grams, and will soon be annoying us with incessant calls for food.