Muddy fledgling

I went for a slow walk along one of the monitoring lines in the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary looking for possible kākāriki karaka nests. We knew there were plenty of our birds there, but had never found any nests. I heard what sounded like nest arrival chatter (the chatter a male will make when he arrives at his nest with a stomach full of food), and two very dirty fledglings tumbled down out of the tree. I could not see the nest hole through thick foliage, but clearly they'd just exited their nest. I'd just watched a nest fledge.

One in particular was completely covered in mud. It had rained the previous night, and I suspect the nest wasn't as watertight as the birds would have liked. The fledglings wanted out of there, but one in particular was trying very hard to fly, and failing. It was not going to fly until its feathers were a lot cleaner. I would like to have somehow captured it and given it a bath, but that wasn't an option. Hopefully the mud would dry out and flake off as it flapped its wings. The dad had departed with the other fledgling (flight training) and would likely return to continue feeding the muddy bird giving it the energy to shake off that mud. I departed and left them to it.