Frogmouth hatching

This morning (3 October) I noticed that the male Tawny Frogmouth was very active on the nest.  (Normally it is very still, almost to the point of being comatose!)  As they have returned to the original nest site in the yellow box (Eucalyptus meliodora - not a plastic milk crate) it is simple to keep an eye on what was going on from my computer.  The nest site is marked with a red X.

The images which follow show some of the changes in position of the bird over about 3 hours.  The images were taken from my chair, through a window, at about 35m range.

The first image was taken at 0800.

 0946

 0954

 1005: note the hunched posture.  It was pecking/pulling at something in the nest.

 1025

 1026: the bird spent quite a bit of time looking upwards in this fashion.  As far as I could determine there were no predators in the tree.

10:44  I think this next image comes just after the bird went through a bout of pecking, during which I saw something white in the nest which appeared to raise what looked like a new-born chicks wing!  Woo-hoo!  During that process the adult bird appeared to pick something up in its beak and swallow it: egg membrane perhaps?

10:46 I became very excited with this image, but unfortunately on getting my telescope onto the case, the white blob resolved to a downy feather.

From my view the greatest excitement of this was that I have in the past regarded the restlessness of the parent as indicating hatching going on down there.  This is the first time that I have caught sight of the chick on that day.

I have been able to record the incubation period for the last 4 years: it has been 29, 28, 28 and now 27 days.  Another observer - far more skilled than myself has suggested that the warm spell in September may have sped the process up.   The decibels after dark suggest it has also encouraged productivity in the frog department, so I expect the chicks to develop quickly.

Moving forward to 19 October I finally got a nice view of Dad and chick.