Spotted Dikkops

I first became aware of Spotted Dikkops when a couple moved into our garden in late 2009. The female laid two eggs but only one hatched that year.

Sadly the little one didn't survive for very long.

The mother's reaction to losing her chick was very sad. I wrote this in the comments about the above photo at DPChallenge on December 30th, 2009:

I'm totally devastated. The baby is dead. When I've looked out of the window this morning I've seen the mother go up to look at him a couple of times and then she stares at me as if she is asking for help.

I keep going back to the window to look in the hope that he is just sleeping and that he'll still move, but he's been lying there for a long time now and I know that it's not going to happen.

I wish I knew what went wrong because the parents were so protective.

I did manage to immortalize the little one on video but the quality isn't very good.

Next summer they were back. This time both eggs hatched and once again I caught them on video.

Once again the little ones didn't survive for long.

They didn't visit again until late 2019. By the time I spotted them in our garden there was already one juvenile, which was bigger than the ones I'd seen in earlier years. As I watched him grow, start exercising his wings and jumping around, I was hopeful that he would survive.

He "posed" for several photos that I liked.

This photo didn't do particularly well at DPChallenge, but I really like it. I titled it "Belly Flop" because he looks as if he had fallen. In reality he was resting in the grass and decided to stretch his wing.

The following photo was taken 18 days later. By then I'd noticed that he was starting to limp, and when I went into the garden he tried to hide in a corner but I managed to get really close and got this portrait.

That was the day I became aware that something wasn't quite right. It was suggested to me that he'd broken one of his wings in an attempt to fly.

The family stuck around a little while longer, then one day they vanished.

The parents returned a week or so later, but I never saw the young one again. I don't know what became of him.

Moving forward to December 2021.

When I was in the garden a couple of weeks ago I spotted a couple behaving as if they were at home. I hoped they were planning to stay. Unfortunately they didn't, but I managed to get a few shots I liked including the one at the top of this post.