Blackbird Diary

For two weeks I was privileged to have a family of nesting blackbirds on my window sill. I kept a diary of their accelerated growth through the two short weeks they were there.

My Blackbirds hatched on father’s day. They were around 2cm long, pink, floppy, and, quite frankly, disgusting. Two out of the original three eggs hatched. For the first two days, their mother sat on them almost constantly, leaving only once or twice a day to feed herself. The male blackbird occasionally visited to provide food for his chicks and mate, using his long beak to support the chick’s heads, to help them swallow.

After three days, their bodies were almost completely covered in a thin, grey, layer of fluff, not enough to keep them warm. This meant that although the mother left more often, her trips for food were short. The chicks were beginning to learn how to control their bodies, and blindly hit each other, thrashed around the nest and lifted their heads themselves when they were fed.


At the age of five days old, the chicks were rapidly putting on weight. They had reached about five cm in length and their downy fluff had been replaced with brown, thicker fluff, and on their tiny wings were the intricate beginnings of flight feathers. They called strongly for food and began to produce faeces. To keep the nest clean, their mother ate their tiny deposits!

When they had reached eight day of age the birds became easier to tell apart. Harry, was bigger and had a darker sheen to her wings. Bertie was picked on by her sister and got only about 1/3 of the food brought to the chicks by their parents. They also sat in the nest in logical positions, giving each their own space (apart from when Harry sat on Bertie!) and supported their bodies like their mother did, resting their heads on their crops, their feet gripping the twigs in the nest (in a similar way to how chickens roost).

At eleven days, the chicks were almost fully developed. They aired their wings to strengthen them, and their flight feathers had all grown properly. Their mother never sat on them, except during the colder nights, and she and the father took it in turns to bring food to the two chicks, about twice every day. The chicks occasionally wandered out of the nest, walking up and down the window ledge, until they decided they preferred to be in their nest. On the twelfth day their mother only sat on them from 11:30- 5:00, only five and a half hours!

Then, after only two weeks of life, the blackbirds were ready to fledge. Harry left the nest almost as soon as she woke up, while Bertie sat on the edge of the rose balcony until lunch time, disappearing in and out of the roses to eat the little insects there, until at 1:45, she left the nest for good.

They now live down by our greenhouse, recognisable because of their fearless regard for humans!

[Sarah is 12 and is a pupil at Colyton Grammar School – Ed.]