the nest is empty

the spotted flycatcher babies grew up real fast. there is only 5 days in between the first picture and the last...







first one to start wandering about, on the right. i'm sure he was the bully who got most of the flies mom and brought them.







by this time they started to get quite vocal...high-pitched "screams"...the dog showed surprisingly little interest in them.







the morning of the last day, all of them still at home. one by one they started spreading their wings...







...one landed on the molding on the door.







this one took the longest, i bet she was the one that only got left-overs form the others. her wing looked a bit crooked, i was worried about this one as there had been strange (stray?) cats around.







she finally got the wing working (i hope) and was gone at dusk. they all stayed around the house for a few days (remember the high-pitched screams?). now we are wondering if there is going to be another set of babies before they start migrating to africa...