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Our blue tit female is now surely making the final additions to her nest in the camera nestbox. She still visits quite often, though not as often as she was about a week ago. The footage in the video below shows some of the visits she made to the box during the day on Wednesday 8th April. If she brings in any more nesting material I'm convinced its going to reach the roof!
As always, watch in 480p if you can.
Going to keep this update short as I realise I'm spamming these nestbox postings a little bit. Back at the house in Reading now as I'm working Thursday-Sunday this week, so it'll be a few days before another nestbox update. Thanks for reading :)
It's almost as though the female blue tit in our camera nest box has finally realised that she's a tad early with her nest building, as she hasn't laid her first egg yet. In fact, she's still even bringing in some nesting material, albeit much less often now. There seems to be more of a thick lining to this nest than the nests of the great tits and blue tits of previous years. She's been bringing in feathers and fur to line the nest for a number of days now.
The weather has been utterly atrocious here all day, so the light hasn't been good enough for the camera to switch from IR mode to full colour. Just going to show a still photo of our female blue tit settled down to roost for the night. Perhaps tomorrow will be the day that she begins laying her clutch of eggs. We shall see.
To make this post more worthwhile, I thought I'd add a few photos I took on Saturday morning when I walked around campus before I headed off to work. I start work at 11:00 usually, so this allows me to get an hours walk in the morning, if I can get out of the house by about 8. The closest entrance to the university campus is about 5 minutes walk away which is very convenient. Saturday morning started very brightly and got gradually worse as the day went on, so I'm glad I managed to enjoy the little bit of sunlight there was.
This great tit was seen in one of the trees overhanging the path around the lake. Believe it or not, this is the cropped version of the photo, which shows that the bird was quite far away. I do wish I had a lens with more reach sometimes...
Finally, here's a shot of an Egyptian goose swimming around the edge of the lake which I took on the way back to the house. A pair of Egyptian geese are always around on campus, although in this case I could only see one of them. Hopefully the other one turns up soon :(
Didn't see anything else particularly unusual whilst out on my walk, although it was nice to see a couple of great spotted woodpeckers, and hear a number of chiffchaffs too. Hopefully I'll get the chance to have a walk round campus when I head back to Reading again later this week. If I can drag myself out of bed a bit earlier, it might even turn into a proper full patch walk. That's a really, really big if though...
Thanks for reading.
The nest building process in our camera nest box seems to have gone very smoothly, with the nest being completed in such a small space of time. However, it is the behaviour of this blue tit at night which is perhaps the most interesting.
For the past two nights, when she has come into the box to roost for the night, another blue tit has been heard calling outside, in pretty close proximity to the box. I assumed this was the male calling to the female; this pair has stayed very close to one another in the garden and its rare to see one of them at the feeders, but not the other. The male has, on a couple of occasions, fed the female inside the box, although I haven't managed to record this happening yet. The female occasionally replies to his calls with a tiny squeak as if to say "feed me".
But the next part is really interesting. The bird calling from outside the box has, on the last two nights, flown onto the hole of the nest box just as the female has been settling down for the night. The reaction to this from the female was totally unexpected. She appears to start hissing at the intruder and spreads her wings out in a very defensive posture, similar to the way that blue tits protect the nest from predators.
I don't absolutely know for sure that it was our male blue tit who is on the hole of the box, but the evidence seems to suggest that it is. He can be heard calling from outside the box, and the female clearly hears him, and replies to his calls on a couple of occasions. She doesn't seem too bothered about him being outside, until he flies onto the hole of the box. My theory is that the male blue tit (assuming that's who it is), is attempting to roost in the box with the female, but she isn't having any of it. I've never known the male and female to roost together in a nest box with a finished nest in it, so this wouldn't surprise me. Also, the reaction from the female, although quite animated, isn't as aggressive as one would imagine it would be if it were a) a predator on the hole of the box, b) another species, i.e. a great tit, or c) another blue tit individual to which she isn't connected. Perhaps this intruder was roosting in the nest box sometimes over of the winter, although I didn't see any signs that a bird had been roosting in the box when I cleaned last year's nest out a few weeks ago.
To be honest, the more I watch it, the more I think it could possibly be another blue tit individual (not her partner), but I just think she would have behaved slightly differently if this was the case. Well I'll let you make your mind up yourself. The video below is a cut down video from a 20 minute recording I got last night at about 19:30 when the female enters the box to roost for the night. I have included a couple of clips where a train goes past the end of the garden (we have a railway line at the end of the garden in case you were unaware). She, like any other bird in our garden, is fully used to the trains passing by every 10 minutes or so, so usually doesn't react to it at all when she is in the nest box. She does seem pretty intrigued though, when a longer, noisier freight train goes past at about the 1 minute, 15 second mark.
Also, she seems to have some serious problems with lice or fleas of some kind, because she's constantly preening herself to try and remove the creatures. On most occasions, you can even see the bugs moving around over her feathers. When you watch the video, I recommend turning the volume up so you can hear the male blue tit calling outside. Also, watch in 480p if you can, as its much better quality than 360p.
The second video below just shows a few clips recorded later on at night (about 22:30) showing the pretty serious parasite problem that she seems to have. She is never asleep for more than a few minutes before she is woken up by the lice/fleas moving through her feathers. It looks SERIOUSLY irritating, even just watching it. Although the parasites might not be harming her directly, she must not be getting enough of a sleep on her roost to maintain the energy levels needed during the breeding season. We'll see how it all unfolds, but I do worry about what will happen when the chicks hatch and the nest parasites are transferred to the chicks too.
Hopefully this issue with parasites doesn't affect the nesting attempt too much, but I fear that it will. Mrs blue tit is STILL adding material to the nest, albeit much less frequently now, which implies that she surely must be finished soon. Still worth remembering that it's early days yet, so it wouldn't be a concern if we didn't see the first egg for another few days yet.
Thanks for reading.
Here we go again; for the third time in four years, our camera nestbox is being occupied. This time, its a blue tit pair who have taken residence.
A few weeks ago, whilst I was at home for the weekend from uni on the 8th/9th March, I removed last years great tit nest from the box ready for the nesting season. Fast forward a couple of weeks to the 23rd when I came home again- this time for my university Easter break, and I turned on the nestbox camera to find a half completed nest with a decent layer of moss. In the time between then and now, our blue tit female has been incredibly busy adding more material to the nest to the point where the nest is now virtually completed.
She is definitely the busiest female we have ever had build a nest in this box; the speed at which she has created it has been phenomenal. The last few days she has been lining the nest with fur and feathers. Every time I thought she was finished, she would bring in another piece of material. There's so much in the box now that she can barely manage it all! She is currently visiting the box as much as 15-20 times an hour, sometimes with nesting material, sometimes without.
Presuming she finally stops bringing in material over the next couple of days, this is the earliest a nest has been completed in our camera nest box. The blue tit female back in 2011 finished her nest on the 15th April, and the great tit last year had finished her nest and laid her first egg on the 27th April. Admittedly, last year's spring was very late, which explains why everything was set back a month or so, but nonetheless, this years blue tit female seems very ahead of the game. The winter was pretty mild, and March has really been very warm at times, so its perhaps unsurprising how early the nest has been completed.
The first video below shows the female coming into the box a couple of times today- firstly at around 11:30, then later at about 13:30. I only got around to getting the camera connected up to my old laptop to record today, hence why there are no videos recorded from the last week or so.
The second video shows a couple of clips from later on in the day (after 16:00), and you can see the progress she has made just in one day.
And finally, here's an image showing what the nest looks like as of around 17:00 today:
So another nest box story begins. It can't go too much worse than the two previous attempts at nesting in this box, which is a positive I guess! No chicks fledged from the blue tit nest of 2011, and only one chick fledged from the great tit nest of 2013. I'm feeling that 2014 is the year that our luck finally changes. I've said it now haven't I? Let's just see what happens then. That sounds a bit bit better doesn't it.
Thanks for reading.
