Saturday 25th, well what do ya know? The Blackbird adults of Family 'Set-B'....you remember them...we had two nests of Blackbirds in the garden and we labeled them Set-A' and 'Set-B'. Well, it seems that having fledged, originally what we think we 3 chicks, they are now collecting mealworms for the new family! As it turns out, this scenario has shown us some interesting Blackbird behaviour. At the beginning of the week, the adult male had the sole task of constantly feeding the two surviving fledglings, which are now as large as he is! Any way, he started bringing them to the back door for mealworms. At first they were a bit apprehensive as you would expect. Now the number of times that they would tun up for food would be six or seven a day! By last Wednesday, the fledglings were quite at ease with the situation and would accompany their parent, who would dutifully feed them with our mealworms. They became so used to the situation that both of them started feeding themselves from the back door. Whenever the door is open they were there. If the adult female was around, she would shoo them away and grab any mealworms for what we think must be a new batch of hatched chicks. She steadfastly refused to feed the fledglings!
Now as of yesterday, the male is refusing to feed the fledglings and is collecting mealworms with which he flies off in the same direction as the female. He will even go so far as to attack the fledglings if they try to steal a mealworm or two. So is this must be indicative of Blackbird behaviour, indeed other birds may behave the same to their offspring?
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