Looking for insects

I am pleased to say that the Great Tit which we saw visit our nest box last week, has returned today. Our camera nest box, which has now been up for a couple of weeks, has certainly attracted lots of attention. Below is the video of this morning's capture. The Great Tit takes some time to come into the box, as it taps away at the hole for quite a while at the start.

Hopefully, you were able to view the video fine. I was really happy with the sound quality of the video, especially when the Great Tit is tapping away at the hole of the box. Again, the video is in colour, although it may look black and white. I have now changed the settings of the camera, so that the video quality should now be clearer.

It looks to be the same Great Tit which we saw visit the box before, although I have heard a second Great Tit calling just outside the nest box. In fact, we already appear to have a Great Tit pair visiting the garden, and the one which is visiting the box, looks to be a female, due to its thinner black stripe on its front. Its amazing to think that these birds are already paired up, ready for the spring ahead.

This Great Tit may have been looking for somewhere to nest next spring, but I reckon that, this time, the bird was looking for insects in the box. Notice the way it pecks around at the drainage holes at the bottom of the box, where insects might be. Hopefully, we will see some more visitor to the box soon.

Elsewhere in the garden, I have seen our Goldcrest again. It was flitting around in our conifer tree again, and presumably, it was looking for insects too. Its visits are quite regular now, and I'm hoping that it will give me the opportunity to take its photograph. They are so very tiny, so its difficult to even follow the bird, let alone take a photo of it.

That's all for today's post, although, should we get any more nest box visitors today, I will upload the videos to this posting later on. Have a great weekend :)

What's caught my eye today?

Its been a while since I posted about our garden's plants, so I thought I would post about what plants have been catching my eye over the last week or so. And for my 100th posting today, I will start with some lilies which have just flowered in our pond...

They really have been adding some colour to our garden at this time of year. Most of our other plants have already flowered and are now "closing down" for the autumn and winter ahead. In the bottom right photo in the montage above, you will notice that some of the flowers are still yet to appear. Hopefully, the frost which we apparently could be getting tonight will not damage these lilies or anything else which happens to be flowering at the moment.

I did notice that many of our plants are losing their leaves now, especially our Apricot Tree. Just next to our pond, we have a little Blueberry plant, and the leaves from this have turned a brilliant purple-red colour. Presumably, it won't be long until our blackcurrant bushes lose their leaves too. Notice the lonely Blueberry still left on the plant!

The birds are still feeding pretty frantically, and I have been very happy to see a Goldcrest again twice, which we last saw earlier in the year. I haven't been lucky enough to get a photo of it yet, although it has allowed me to get very close. Its very difficult to follow the tiny bird as it flits through the needles of the conifer. Another small bird which has been visiting again recently is the Long-Tailed Tit, which we see more and more of nowadays.

As usual, the LTT's visit with the Blue and Great Tits, and just recently, we have also seen the return of the Coal Tit to our garden. Today, I saw a Blue Tit on our fat block feeder by the Apricot Tree. I haven't seen any more visitors inside our camera nest box today, although we have been hearing the birds tapping at the entrance hole and calling to one another.

We have also had groups of around 9-10 Goldfinches visiting our feeders too. When I am outside though, they tend to gather on a nearby tree, waiting for me to go back inside before coming in to feed at our feeders.

Hopefully, I will be seeing more of the same as the week goes on. Maybe we will even get a bird roosting in our camera nest box, should the temperature get cold enough. I wonder what your gardens are like at this early stage in autumn. Have a great week :)

Moving house

I am pleased to say that we now have our camera nest box fully up and running and I have it all set up to record any visitors we get. This is a sort of "part 2" to my previous posting, where I explained the new location of our camera nest box. Because of the poor light, I couldn't get a decent photo of the box to show you on my last posting. Well, I went out the next day and took this...

As you can see, the nest box is now quite high up in our apple tree at the end of the garden. It now has a metal protective plate so that predators cannot widen the hole and get at any birds inside the box. I expected this to be a much better location for our birds to nest. However, I did not expect to see such a quick response from the birds. We got our first visitor to the new box just a couple of days after we moved it.

Yep, a Blue Tit had a quick look inside our camera nest box just yesterday. I really wasn't expecting this, so I blindly starting recording the box, only to realise that I hadn't changed the settings so that it would be in colour! Annoyingly, I now have a black and white video of a Blue Tit visiting the box. I was still very happy to see it. I have decided not to upload this video, however, I did change the settings so that it would be ready for another visit.

What a surprise it was this morning to hear a tapping noise on the hole of the nest box just minutes after I had turned my computer on at 8:45 this morning. Because I can't see the nest box from the house, I had no idea what the bird would be, although I suspected it could be another Blue Tit. How wrong I was! I was thrilled to see a Great Tit pop into the box. I hit the record button, and this is what I saw...

This video is in fact in colour (although it may look like its in black and white). The reason for this is that it wasn't very light in the garden at this time, so the colour is dulled. As usual, the quality of video you will see will not be as high as the quality I will be able to view. Listen out for the Great Tit calling in the video too.

Hopefully, this will be the first of many visits to our camera nest box through the winter :) I'll be checking for any roosters tonight. Fingers crossed for that. Have a great weekend (whats left of it)!

Miserable

The title of this post may be depressing, but so has the weather we have had today. Since I left the house for school this morning, it has rained non-stop. It really was horrible. But it was nice to come home today to find a parcel for me.

Before I blab on about what the parcel was, you ought to know this first: Last weekend, we took down our camera nestbox from the wall of our house. I have been planning on moving the box to the end of the garden for some time now and, for several reasons. Firstly, we have plans to build a small kitchen extension on the house next year, and, with our nestbox on the wall of the house, I thought that this could well ruin the chances of our box being used for nesting. The box also needed to have a quick clean-out to remove all wood shavings.

After the photo below was taken, I added a metal protective plate to the hole of the nestbox to prevent it from being damaged by predators.

So, we moved the box to the end of the garden in a pretty well-hidden place in the hope that we might get any roosters for the winter. Trouble is, that the camera cable wasn't long enough to go from the house to the box. This is where the parcel comes in. Phew, glad I got that explaining out of the way. The parcel contained a cable extension. I went outside in the rain after school with the cable extension to connect it all up. It really was wet work.

By the time I was finished, the weather had got worse and it was getting darker, so I was unable to take a photo of the new location of the box. I think I will post again tomorrow with a photo inside and outside the box. Finishing off on a happier note, the forecast for tomorrow is brilliant. Wahay ;)

Garden update

We have really had plenty of action in our garden recently. On Thursday, I went out to take a few photos of the birds, who have been feeding frantically recently. The finches are arriving in large numbers at the moment, as are the sparrows, but the first bird I saw on Thursday was this cheeky little Blue Tit...

Also seen were these sparrows at the other feeding station in our garden.

Some of you may remember that we created a small pond in our garden, in the hope that the wildlife in our garden would use it. The pond now looks much more a part of the garden than it used to and really fits in well where it currently is. Below is a photo of the pond as it was when we first created it.

We added some pond weed and plants to surround it. Below is a photo of what the pond looks like now.

However, whilst the pond might look a lot better and attract more wildlife now, we have found that there is a bit of a problem with it. The pond appears to be leaking water into the soil. We have to fill up the pond once every day or two, which really isn't right. The pond is quite shallow, so we originally thought that the water was just evaporating away. But just recently, the weather has been cooler and yet the pond is leaking just as much as before. At some point, we may have to create this pond again so that it stops leaking.

Enough of that for now. In the last few weeks, we have seen glimpses of a little Wood Mouse in our garden shed. I have no idea how it got inside, or when but its definitely made its presence known. My Dad first saw the mouse as he opened the top drawer in a chest of drawers in our shed last week amongst loads of shredded paper. I think it may have been starting to nest! Below are the photos of the drawer. Unfortunately, we couldn't get a photo of the mouse.

A view of the draw with the shredded paper...

I even found that part of a fat block for the birds being stored in the shed had been nibbled by the mouse! See the picture below.

Hope you all had a great weekend :)