chicks have fledged!

Yesterday evening both chicks were still in the nest, though getting bigger, as my video posted this morning showed. But today at 5 pm the nest was empty. I closely scrutinized the nest tree, and was able to spot both youngsters, perched on separate twigs quite a bit higher than the nest (which is about 6 feet off the ground. I observed Mme W feeding one of them on 2 occasions and was able to film the brief feeding. The fledgelings were making no attempt yet to feed themselves, they were basically just sitting and waiting for the mom. But they occasionally flew to a different branch, in the same tree or a close neighbor. The first video below shows one of the youngsters perching quietly, the second shows a feeding episode.

Tomorrow they will become more adventurous and independent, and difficult to monitor.
It took about 2 weeks from hatching to fledging. Amazing!

The third video shows initially the 2 offspring of Mme W, who fledged from the nest today. One is perched to the left of the view (this is the oine features in the other 2 videos) and the other is initially perched on the right side of the view (different branches of the same tree that holds the  now empty nest. Very quickly the one on the right starts to fly around - you can see the movement and then trace back to where she was initially perched. Toward the end of the movie I zoom out and move the viewpoint to show the location of the nest, in the same tree.