Chick’s Progress 3 : Whiskered Treeswift

14th August 2010, Kemensah, Selangor

We had   heavy thunderstorms and extremely strong winds yesterday. Picked up the morning paper and the headline was ‘ 3 killed  at Ramadhan Bazaar in Jasin, Melaka’  when the temporary structures were carried away by the strong wind-so sad to learn about the tragic loss of lives. I was anxious to find out how the Treeswifts fared after the thunderstorm. When I arrived at the nest I saw that the tree had sprouted new shoots/ leaves so I couldn’t immediately spot the chick.  A long sigh of relief  when I saw the chick basking and spreading her wings in the early morning sunshine. Phew…… ( Previous post of the chick) It was day 20 from when the chick was first sighted (25th July 2010). I think she could be  23 days old today. The white head stripes were clearly visible and she now looked like a ‘mini’ whiskered treeswift. My feeling is that the chick could be a ‘ he’. Judging by the progress I think the chick should fledge in about a week, I certainly hope so!  I only have until 25th August before going  on a long leave. This would make a good Father’s Day card. Any suggestions on the names? I was thinking ‘Hakem’ for a male and ‘Esah’ if it’s a female – she’s from Kemensah! I caught Dad dozing off a few times and was startled when he was  about to  lose his balance  and fall off the tree!  Raising a young is no easy task, it takes a heavy toll on your body.   Working those newly developed wing muscles. It wont be long now before those muscles will have to function for real. Notes: I didn’t know that I had more ‘reach’ stored in my camera bag than  I had realized. My old Kenko 1.4x TC had some problems with the contacts and I had replaced it with the Nikkor 14EII. It looked ridiculous at first when I tried putting the two TCs together on the 300mm f4 lens but I was surprised that I now have  an 882mm reach ( D90 1.5x crop) with  full  working electronics and autofocus , WoW!. You can do this with Kenko TC since the front glass element does not protrude  and touch the rear elements of the Nikkor TC. Image quality is definitely better than the manual 2x TC which I had  used previously and having the autofocus helps tremendously.