Kestrel Chicks All Alone After Mum Disappears 🐥😢

This is Mrs Kez, a female kestrel brooding six chicks. They're just a couple of days old and have got a lot of growing to do. But for Mrs Kez, incubation wasn't easy. She battled barn owls, jackdaws, tawny owls, and even a red kite. And thanks to her determination she's now got a healthy brood. She tears prey into small pieces and carefully feeds each chick in turn. While a female kestrel feeds the chicks, the male's main role is to provide for the family. Her mate Mr Kez arrives and drops off his catch. The pair make a great team. But over the next few days Mrs Kez doesn't seem herself. She's an experienced mother but now she's restless. And she's leaving the nest more often than she should. Leaving her tiny chicks unprotected and at risk of getting cold. She seems on edge and even at night she's not sleeping well. The next day she leaves the nest again. It's just not normal behaviour for her. She's back and she's calling as if she's sensed a threat. It could be the barn owls nesting nearby. Or tawny owls Bomber and Luna roosting in the trees with the fledglings. But whatever it is something isn't quite right. As night falls the atmosphere changes. Mrs Kez hears the tawny owls calling outside. The tawnies have two chicks that have only just fledged so they're really protective. Luna the female leaves and lands at the kestrel nest. Mrs Kez tenses up and as the tawny owl tries to enter she lunges. The threat is over for now. A couple of nights later Mrs Kez wakes. Kestrels struggle to see in the dark but she senses something outside. She heads out leaving her chicks alone in the nest. When she returns she seems rattled and falls from the entrance. She eventually lands but the ordeal isn't over yet. Tawny owl Luna takes off towards the kestrel's nest. Mrs Kez nearly falls out as she scrambles to defend herself. The tawny owl lands on the camera but soon takes off. She can't see the threat in the darkness but she knows it's there. The kestrel returns to the chicks but 10 minutes later just after midnight she heads out again and disappears into the night leaving the chicks completely alone. By morning Mrs Kez hasn't returned and the chicks are calling desperately. Just after 5am Mr Kez arrives. After a night alone the chicks are cold and hungry but the male has brought food and drops a vole down for them. Although he's equipped to provide for the chicks he's got no idea how to feed them. They haven't been fed in over 12 hours and if they don't eat soon they'll die. Mr Kez keeps returning with more prey and the chicks are getting more and more desperate. One of the chicks tries to eat but they can't feed themselves. They decide it's time to intervene. So Mrs Kez left the nest at midnight just after a confrontation with the tawny owls and it's 10 o'clock in the morning now and she still isn't back and the chicks are getting cold. I carefully open up the nest so I can assess the chicks. They're starving so I gently feed them by hand. The nest is full of mice and voles and the female would have fed them all of this by now. So these chicks are really hungry and there seems to be three that are doing quite well and still quite strong but there's some that are getting quite weak in here so I think I'm gonna have to take them out. I carefully lift the chicks from the nest so I can take them for a more thorough health check. So the last thing I wanted to do is to take these chicks out of the nest but some of them are really struggling now. So I've had to take them out and I'm just going to do a quick health check on each one and see which ones I might need to keep out of the nest today and get warm straight away. So this one's fed really well down in the nest you can see it's got a full crop here and then we've got some smaller ones here that are clearly struggling. Yeah that one hasn't taken any food and this little tiny one here it's still quite warm but I can feel on the wing tips it's getting quite cold so we need to keep that one in. So after a health check of these kestrels I'm going to keep three with me here on a heat mat and I'm going to try three back down in the nest in the hope that the female kestrel returns. So I've prepared a heat mat up in the nest and I've got the three bigger chicks here and they're nice and warm and well fed so I'm going to try them back in the nest. It's really important if the female does return that there's chicks in here otherwise she might abandon this nest. So I've just got to cross my fingers now Mrs Kes is out there somewhere and comes back during the day. Now it's time to check up on the three smaller chicks that have been warming up in the studio. So I've had these chicks in now a couple of hours and warming them up these two are having their second feed and the little one's just woken up and is ready for its first feed. There we go. So it's amazing to see this little one now it was really cold when I first got it in and not moving much at all but I've warmed it up now and look at it begging for food. Absolutely superb. Meanwhile back at the nest the three oldest chicks are huddling up for warmth. It's only been 10 minutes since I returned them to the nest and Mr Kes wastes no time in coming back to them. He's brought even more food but when they won't take it his instincts kick in. He tries to brood them, usually the role of the female. It's remarkable to watch but you can tell he's not used to this and with no sign of Mrs Kes returning I'll be keeping a close eye to see how he gets on as a lone parent. In the next film watch how Mr Kes steps up to the challenge and will it be possible to return the hand-reared chicks to the nest? Make sure to subscribe to see how the story unfolds. Thank you for watching and I hope you enjoyed the video. Don't forget to like, comment and subscribe to see more. Here's a taste of what you'll enjoy seeing on this channel.