Magpie has had the blue tit chicks

barry island

I have a horrible feeling that the chicks which were about to fledge from the nest box have been had by a magpie, it has been looking like they would leave the box today as the parents were increasingly having trouble getting into the box to feed them suggesting to me that the chicks had grown big and were pushing forward towards the hole. Looking out of the kitchen window this morning I noticed a rather large magpie on the fence at the bottom of the garden and then on the neighbours roof being mobbed by a blackbird and a pair of blue tits, too late to save the chicks I fear. All blue tit activity has ceased and the magpie is still around looking for more easy prey I suppose. After all of the parents hard work as well, very sad.

Dovefromabove

It’s nature I’m afraid … magpie chicks have to eat too. If all the bluetits that are hatched reached adulthood we’d soon be knee deep in them 

barry island

The survival of the fittest.

Fairygirl

Indeed. That's how nature works, and we often just don't see it 

Dovefromabove

Not even the survival of the fittest really … ‘cos  without having many many of the little species, the bigger ones can’t survive … it’s just that mankind’s effect on the environment has been to reduce the numbers of all the little things .., the invertebrates, that the next size up needs to feed on … so there are fewer of the smaller birds and mammals that the bigger birds need in order to exist …  so not so much the survival of the fittest … it’s more about interdependence really 😊 

Fairygirl

I think people forget about the whole food chain @Dovefromabove - every creature has a need for another one.
It's why there's a problem when a species actively gets removed. When there's a vacuum, something has to fill it too.
Balance is always the key, but not always easy to achieve when we create our gardens, because we alter that, no matter how much we think we aren't