Finishing touches

Our blue tit female really has worked hard to get her nest finished since Sunday when I put up the camera. I am a little behind on posting about the progress of the nest, simply because she is constantly adding to it. So I will put some of the videos showing her work on Monday and Tuesday, as well as showing you a picture of what the nest looks like as I watch the TV screen this morning.

The clip below shows what the nest looked like on Monday morning, after she had added lots of material the evening before, as it was going dark. It is clear that she had already started adding hair and wool to the nest for lining, although this proved to be a long process!

One thing I haven't seen yet is the male coming into the box to feed the female. I have seen him around the box, and feeding at the feeders with the female, but he seems a bit reluctant to actually visit the box and feed her. Hopefully, when the female is incubating eggs, he will start to do this. The video below shows the female fluttering her wings in the nest, presumably wanting food from the male at about 10:00am.

The clip below shows what the nest looked like later in the day on Monday, at about 17:30.

Throughout the day, and on Monday night, the female seemed to be scratching herself a lot, as if mites, fleas or ticks are present on her feathers or in the box generally. I'm guessing she was already carrying them on her feathers, because the nest box hasn't actually been used before, so there was no previous nest which could be carrying parasites. So on Monday night in particular, she seemed like she was really struggling to get to sleep, waking up every 30 secs- 1 minute to scratch and preen herself. It looked uncomfortable, even from just watching it! Maybe the chicks will suffer from the parasites when they hatch :-( The video below shows her at about 11:00 (about 3-4 hours after she went into the box to roost.

She did eventually settle down, but still woke up fairly frequently in discomfort. The picture below shows her with her head tucked under her wing for the night:

Yesterday, she continued to add hair and wool to the box, and the layer actually began to look a bit excessive, with almost no moss visible whatsoever!

I was amazed to see the female bring in a leaf of a green plant for the nest. I have no idea what plant it is, but apparently, blue tits are known for bringing in medicinal plants to disinfect their nests. Find out more on this BBC article. It is not very clear from the video below, but you should be able to make out the leaf which has been brought in.

The video below shows the blue tit visiting the box at around 14:30. Keep watching after it flies out the first time, as it visits again about 5 seconds later.

Finally, the images below show the blue tit visiting this morning, and also what the pretty much completed nest looks like:

Now that the nest building is pretty much complete, I am really looking forward to seeing the first egg in the nest box, which could be laid tomorrow morning. We are going on holiday on Friday, which is actually pretty good timing, because the female will be probably laying the last egg or two when we get back, and we won’t miss any of the feeding. I am starting to worry about where the male has gone now though. The female appears to be calling for him quite a lot without any response. Hopefully, he will get involved soon. Fingers crossed. Thanks for reading this far, it has been a bit of a mammoth posting. Have a great week :D