Waiting for food...

...Last night I was sitting on my swing as dusk was falling and I noticed something on a branch of willow. It looked like a fur ball.

So I got my phone and walked carefully up to it. It was gone 10 pm when I took the pic on the top left. So it was too dark to take a photo really. I had turned off the flash because if it was a small creature I didn't want to frighten it. The phone could see more than I could. I could just see a blurry fur ball.

I took a second pic top right. Still a fur ball.

I took a third pic bottom left. But I didn't see what it was until I got back into my bedroom with the light on and then I saw it was a bird.

I could see it was big. At least as big as the adult blackbirds who were feeding their young in the nest.

This morning I woke early. I could see from my bedroom as it was still on the willow. It had moved a couple of branches.

At 5:33 am I walked round the garden path, as I do to get to the potting shed, and snapped this photo bottom right with my phone and then came back into my bedroom.

It is at least the same size as the male and female blackbirds. You can see there are virtually no tail feathers yet, just a squat tail.

On 14th June I blipped here that the male and female blackbirds were stealing my frogs. The blackbirds were at least feeding the young in their nest nest then, on 14th June, and it seemed to me they had been feeding the young before 14th June. The ground was very dry, the soil like dust because we'd had no rain for quite a bit.

On 24th June I blipped here a young blackbird bringing in food for the young in the nest. And I questioned why Mr and Mrs Blackbird along with two young female blackbirds (this year's brood) were all bringing in food for the same nest.  So 4 blackbirds were bringing in food as fast as they could.

Then last night I saw what looked like this furball on the willow, as you can see from the above photos.

So if my maths is right you have about 19 days from when I observed the blackbirds stealing my frogs to this young bird appearing on the willow. But I did think the blackbirds were bringing food into the nest before that date.

There is only the one baby bird. There are no more in my garden. This baby bird is at least the size of the fully grown blackbirds and bigger than the two young females that were helping in the feeding. I noticed yesterday the two young females were picking up caterpillars from my garden and taking them to the nest. This young baby bird obviously left the nest under the cover of dusk last night.

It is sunning itself now in the early morning sun which reached my garden about 6am. I won't go anywhere near it now because this is its first day out of the nest and I can see from my bedroom it is being fed.

So is this just a large baby blackbird? Or do I have a baby cuckoo?

I am unable to put links on the dates of the other blip posts I have mentioned from this device. So I will try from a little known browser I sometimes use, but it is a little skittish when I try to enter text for blip. I think I had better copy and paste this post in case I lose it. Back in 15 mins...

Success. I managed it! It is very annoying that Blipfoto has no provision on my iPad or iPhone where I post all my blips from and I have to resort to a little known browser which at best is very skittish when I enter text, (though this browser is good because it allows flash which means I can get up subtitles...I am deaf and cannot hear the words...when I want to watch You Tube on iPad and iPhone and these devices themselves do not support flash which means I can miss out on a lot) and this browser allows me these extra edit facilities at the bottom of the text box.