Videoscoping Wallcreepers on nest

So, here it is finally, the video of the wallcreepers (Tichodroma muraria, Mauerläufer) at the nest.

Wallcreeper (Tichodroma muraria, Mauerläufer) pair at nest

This is just a short videoscoping clip, but in some of my video footage, you can actually count four little bills, but there might even be five chicks in the wallcreeper nest. In the video you can see the male (the one with the larger dark patch on the throat) bringing insect food back to the nest. From my various photos of the male wallcreeper, it seems the food destined for the young chicks mostly consists of various Thysanura (wild, rock silverfish), a few species of spiders and at least one cricket. When the female was still on the eggs, the male seemed to be bringing her mainly nice large juicy crickets, but I suspect these were too small for the week old chicks at that stage so the cricket the male brought in was quite probably for the female.

Telling the male wallcreeper from the female wallcreeper is normally very difficult. Most field guides and online references I have read state that the male wallcreeper is largely black underneath in the breeding season and that the female only ever really has either a great throat or mild speckling. The male mostly looses his black belly and throat outside of the breeding season. What was interesting about this pair is that the female also had a fairly large black throat patch (see my first post and photos of the female wallcreeper at the nest). While the female was still incubating, the male had quite a large black throat and breast, but within a week, the male's black breast was fading fast. My last series of photos of the male wallcreeper show it with only the remnants of its black breast. It seems incredible that he was loosing his breeding colours so soon after (during) the breeding season.

The video was videoscoped from what I guess is about 25m with a Swarovski Optik ATM80HD telescope, 25-50xW eyepiece, UCA digiscoping adapter and a Panasonic Full HD SD100 camcorder.