Will I ever catch them?

Hmm... I am beginning to think if I will ever be lucky enough to capture these birds on camera as they investigate the box. I think we have had birds investigating this box twice now, and I have missed both of them. At least I know that, come spring, I will have a better chance of actually seeing the birds nesting. Again, you will really have too look carefully at the images below for this one! The wood shavings at the bottom of the nestbox seem to have given them away again. The wood shavings have definitely at least been disrupted.

Actually, before I go any further into these recent sightings, as you will already know that I created this new blog. I have done this, mainly to show my camera nestbox sightings as a separate diary. It will also be easier for you, as readers to skip between my recent camera nestbox postings. If we don't get any nesting Blue Tits this year, I will still keep the blog for next year. I will also say that there will be more and more postings here going into the spring supposing we do get nesting birds.

Again, I am not sure if anything stayed for long as the wood shavings have not moved too much. Apparently, a familiar sight with camera nestboxes is that, any residents will often frantically remove wood shavings from the box (presumably because it is not approved nesting material. So if I happen to notice that the shavings are decreasing, I think I will know why. I also don't know what species entered the box. If it wasn't a Blue Tit, I think it is more likely that it would have been a House Sparrow. A Great Tit (I would have thought) would be unlikely to nest so close to the house - but I could be wrong.

Before:
After:

This time, I have not used videos to show the nestbox. I found that, last time, the videos were not going to be clear enough for you to see the difference. Notice in the picture that, i particular there is one large wood shaving that has moved from the bottom of the picture to the left hand side of the picture. By the way, I have considered the possibility that the wind could be disrupting the wood shavings however it was not remotely windy today. The bottom image was taken during the day and the top one was during the night, but you will still notice that the bottom picture is very different from the top one.

Have you noticed any birds visiting you nestboxes at this time of year. Now that I have a camera nestbox I have noticed just how frequent these visits are for us even before the birds start nesting. I wonder if I will get any roosting Blue Tits in the box while the weather is still cold. I know that Shirl at Shirls gardenwatch has seen this in her camera nestbox. Looks like this could be an interesting year, Shirl. My mealworms have arrived and I have already put them out in the garden - the adult birds like them too, especially the Robins.

All images taken in my camera nestbox on 20th Jan and 21st Jan