While Two-Tone the Blackbird was struggling so hard a few weeks back, (apparently all by himself) to feed his newly fledged family, it appears that Mrs Two-Tone wasn’t dead after all, but fully preoccupied with sitting on her next clutch of eggs. That’s an unusual degree of overlap (even for Blackbirds), to the extent that I was convinced at the time that something untoward had befallen her! However, it turns out that she was fine and dandy the whole time, but completely unable to help the exhausted Two-Tone feed the voracious and relentlessly demanding fledglings from their first brood….Not to mention the fact that he was probably working hard to feed her a lot of the time as well! Oh well, I guess it just goes to show how devoted parent Blackbirds actually are to each other and to their young.

Meanwhile, the young Blackbird in the photograph above is the only one from the second brood still insisting upon trailing around after its father the whole day and demanding constantly to be fed. I’ve decided to call it “Tony”….or possibly “Toni” if it turns out to be a female.