Five Little Dicky Birds Sitting in a Nest

In May, about the time we were hatching our own hen and duck eggs, Harriet brought the inside of a nest to show everybody. The nest had fallen from a house where it had been fastened to the roof with mud. We thought it must have belonged to a House Martin.

We remembered about the old House Martin's nest in the shelter outside and went to have a look. We saw how it was still fastened to the roof of the shelter. We didn't know if the nest had any eggs in it because we couldn't see inside.

There were eggs inside and over the past few weeks everyone in school has been watching two adult House Martins busily flying backwards and forwards to the shelter. They were collect insects as the flew and taking them to feed their babies.

We even stopped using the shelter so we wouldn't disturb the birds.

On Wednesday last week Class One went out to sit quietly in the shelter to watch the action and they weren't disappointed. They saw the parent birds flying in and out and could see the hungry chicks feeding. Some of the children took photographs and some used the video camera to record what they saw. Later we decided to do a blog so they could tell everyone about the birds. These are the things they wanted to say:

"The nest is in the shelter." "There were eggs in the nest and then they hatched." "They are cute." "They were tiny and now they've grown." "They are tidy because they poo outside the nest by hanging their tails and their bottoms out." "We were not allowed in the shelter because we would scare the birds. If the mummy and daddy stopped feeding them they would die." "The mummy and daddy birds get creatures to feed the babies. They fly in and land on the edge of the nest and feed the babies from their beaks."

"The grown ups drop the food in the babies open mouths." "When the grown ups come back the babies tweet very loudly."

When we went to check on the bids on Thursday we saw that the chicks had started to leave the nest. On Friday they were roosting on the beams inside the shelter and then flying back to the nest. We could now see that there were five chicks altogether.

When we looked on Monday the nest looked empty and there were no signs of the House Martins anywhere. It was nice to know the chicks are now fully grown. We hope they come back and have more babies later in the summer or next year.