Cornish Kestrels part 20

Cornish Kestrel,

It was a grey overcast morning today which can make it difficult to record images of our kestrel within their over shadowed scrape so if the following images look a bit like a black cat in a coal shed you will know the reason why,  They have all been taken on ISO 6400 to try to obtain some sort of reasonable shutter speed but enough excuses:  here they are !

The first image shows our female Katie looking quite comfortable sitting on her eggs

Around thirty minutes later she moved off of the eggs for a stretch and I was delighted to see that her egg count has risen to five speckled beauties,

She was heading back to the eggs within a few minutes and stayed on them until I left around an hour later

It is quite normal for kestrel to delay incubation of their eggs until after the forth one is laid but it is also nice to eventually see them settle down to the task,  Three years ago the first four eggs were all laid during a cold spell of weather and the outcome was that only the last laid fifth and sixth eggs hatched  Here's hoping all will be well this year !

There was no sign of the male bird during this visit but that is not unusual either.