The spring is slipping away. The starlings will be fledging chicks any day soon and there was a pair of stonechats down at the big gate to the SWT reserve at Kilminning with four newly fledged chicks. Stonechats are common again all along the coastal path after the run of relatively mild winters (the beast from the East last year notwithstanding). Stonechats are always conspicuous as they perch on fence posts and chack at you when you come near. But they get particularly noisy and flighty when they have young chicks just out of the nest. The young are brown and streaky like robins (and many other young chats like wheatears or bluethroats). The ones today were perched out in the open and dopey looking – the next week will be a testing time for them to avoid the local sparrowhawks before they get a bit more worldly wise. The sparrowhawks have their own chicks to feed of course.
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