The Great Egret chicks waste no time when the adult returns to the nest with food. It’s every chick for himself, and the first order of business is to latch onto the adult’s beak or neck.
The egrets’ necks are very flexible and the chicks know how to encourage the regurgitation of their dinner.
The adult always takes a pause and looks skyward before producing the meal.
Then he bends one more time and one chick opens wide while the other watches.
It was hard to tell if they both got something this trip. The entire maneuver got repeated but they were all moving around so much I lost track of which chick was which.
When the chicks were smaller the adult would supervise and maybe have to do some enticing with the food to get them to eat. Now that they are nearly full-grown the adult quickly moves out of reach of those sharp beaks.
Taken 5/29/2019
Wow. It can be dangerous to be an adult now that the chicks are bigger and more aggressive. How much longer before the chicks can fend for themselves?
I often wonder why we don’t see more injuries! They fly at about 6-7 weeks, so I think this set is nearly there. I’m not sure if the adults just stop bringing food at that point or if the chicks decide to strike out on their own and don’t return. They don’t feed in this pond so once they go we rarely see them come back. The Great Blue Heron chicks seem to hang around a little longer after their first flight. I suspect that it is hunger that finally pushes them to leave.