Starling     Kuldnokk         Sturnus vulgaris

 

Similar events may well happen in our home yard. In our yard we have found in spring over the years pale blue eggs as well as egg shells and pondered on how these things may have come to such places but mostly these questions have stayed unanswered. The videos below offer a documentary view of the happenings today.

 

 

This morning, at about 10.40, a starling female arrived to the nest box, and for laying the first egg she needed barely a minute.

One hour later the next female arrived at the nest trunk and decided that she is the owner of the nest and determined to remove the previous bird’s egg from the nest.

Short video of the egg being carried out:

 

 

In the long version we see that the last arrived female had to work really hard, and even tried to crush the egg.

 

 

The fact that a third female starling arrived barely ten minutes later and laid her egg in the nest box bears evidence of the shortage of nest boxes …

 

 

The females of passerines lay one egg per day, which means that today three females must have been involved. Whether all the observed ones were fiancées of the nest owner male is difficult to say?

But the story that had lasted a couple of hours continues. At 12.20 a female who probably had already laid an egg arrived in order to remove the last egg from a competitor .

 

 

In the afternoon the male passed by the empty nest box a couple of times to check the empty nest and fluff the nest hollow. In the webcam we can see that emptyness reigns again in the nest box, LINK

Another proof of how little we know of what happens in our closest surroundings.