No 4th egg

The estimated time for the 4th egg, Wednesday afternoon, came and went...

At 6pm on Wednesday.

A nest relief Friday lunchtime, still 3 eggs

Couldn't resist this 'looking at camera' shot...

It's a bit difficult to pinpoint the exact time incubation started as they sat on the eggs pretty much constantly almost as soon as the first one was laid but if we take the usual time of when the penultimate egg is laid, that would be Friday 15th. 29 to 32 days from then is Saturday 14th May to Thursday 17th for hatching.

Day 10, so far so good. Most of the boredom relief was provided by some rain and thunder on Saturday as the falcon looked quite puzzled by the noise on the roof of the nestbox.

The rest of the time, she reorganises the pebbles in that semi-circle you can see on her left.

Third egg

Charlie laid her third egg last night. She entered the nestbox after a mating session with MrC at 19:40.



She was pretty quiet until 4:38 when she turned round. Not 100% sure but it looked like she still had 2 eggs under her then. She then had a snooze until 5:10. Does it look like she is laying the egg during the following clip? One thing for sure, there are 3 eggs when she gets up :)

Seond egg

On Friday morning, Charlie was in the scrape for most of the morning, the last view I found of a single egg being at 8:33. At 11:11, her mate brought her some prey (not sure there was much left on it to be fair) which she accepted. When she finally got off the scrape, she revealed the second egg:



Earlier, at 9am, he had brought her I assume the same prey, slightly less consumed. The reaction was entirely different then...:

the male sees the egg for the first time

I watched hours of recording for Wednesday to Thursday night, and it appears I was really lucky to see the first egg at 6:11. She left the nest ledge at 12:39 and waited 18 minutes outside the nestbox before going in. From then on, until 6:08, she was pretty tight on that scrape, only allowing a very short glimpse of the egg at 5:43. The tiercel made brief visits at 5:25 and 5:38, which didn't stir her up.

The video below shows the moment she gets up at 6:08 revealing the egg and shortly after the tiercel coming round the corner to have a look:

First egg

The view I had been waiting for for weeks, at last, over night, Charlie laid her first egg this year.  Last night, she arrived in the box at 7:30pm and for once did stay for more than a few minutes (I even had the aptop on the kitchen table while preparing my dinner...), around 25 minutes. But then she hopped back on the ledge. And returned to the box for around 15 minutes. Then from 8:30 until 11pm, she just stood on the nest ledge. I barely dared hope when I checked the CCTV when I got up, but there it was at last: an EGG!!!
She was soon back on it and has been for most of the day (though she won't be properly  incubating it quite yet). She had a long break at the end of the afternoon to eat some prey MrC had caught and then digest it, while he kept vigil on the ledge.
Here's to the second one!