Still Awaiting First Egg

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. 

Great Tit Chicks Still Going Well (17th-18th May)

It's been a few days since the chicks hatched in our camera nestbox on the 14th. The nest, which looked as though it had been attacked by something only contained two tiny chicks, the others which we presumed had died, or the eggs destroyed before they had hatched. The situation didn't look promising at all for the two remaining chicks, as the parents were struggling to feed the chicks hidden under the pile of messed up nesting material. The male especially, couldn't seem to feed the female, who wasn't particularly good at accepting the food which was being brought in to be passed onto the chicks. The amount of feeds from the parents was still quite high, and it seemed as though there was actually plenty of insect food to feed the chicks. 

Fast forward to now (the 18th), and amazingly, the two remaining chicks are still alive and both being fed by the parents. They are growing very slowly in size however. They are now 5 days old (including the day that they hatched), and they're still not an awful lot bigger than they were when they hatched. Maybe the attack on the nest caused the eggs to hatch slightly prematurely, and the chicks were smaller than they should have been. The video below shows a couple of feeds from the parents on the 17th. 

  

And the next video shows the situation of the nest on the 18th. As you can see, the video is in black and white, even though it was recorded in bright conditions in the late afternoon. So it seems as though the nesting material was covering the windows on either side of the nestbox again, stopping enough light getting into the box for colour images. Hopefully this won't last too long though, and things will be back to normal before too long.  



That's all for today's update. I just want to keep things ticking over here so that I don't have tons of stuff to get through. Thanks for reading and I'll probably be back with another video tomorrow, as things are at a pretty crucial stage right now. 

Camera Nestbox Disaster!

I left you with some relatively calm images from our camera nestbox a couple of days ago, where our female Great Tit was still incubating 5 eggs with the male Great Tit feeding her frequently. Well I think it's safe to say things have changed fairly significantly since then. And it's not been good change either...

So on the day of my last post (the 14th), our female Great Tit had been incubating the 5 eggs in our camera nestbox for about 12-13 days, so I was expecting the eggs to hatch soon. Not long after I posted that, I rang home to find out what the situation with the box was. And to my surprise, they told me that they could see at least two chicks in the nestbox. They also explained that there was something rather strange about how the nest looked. 

I asked them to send me a few photos and videos via Dropbox, and this is what I saw...



I know, what a complete mess, right! I have no idea whatsoever what happened between the photos and videos of the impeccably neat nest that we could see on the morning of the 14th, compared with the situation the nest was in later in the day. If you haven't seen what the nest looked like before, take a quick look at my last post in this camera nestbox diary. 

From what I can see here, the nest has been completely ruined by something. The nesting material was in a real state, with no distinguishable nest cup whatsoever. It looked as though a huge clump of material had been removed from the nest and placed on top. The height of the nest had increased greatly as well, and seemed to be covering up the windows on the sides of the box, meaning there wasn't enough light in the box to record in colour. The first pictures and videos I was receiving from the box at this stage were all in black and white (using the infrared function on the camera) even though they were all recorded during the daytime. The two chicks which had hatched could barely be seen under the large layer of messy nesting material which was covering them. 

My first thought was that the box may have fallen off the tree, so I asked Mum to pop outside and check that the box was still in place- which it was. So I wondered what could have possibly caused the nest to have been ruined in the way it has. My second theory was that possibly something like a Mapgie or a cat may have tried to attack the nestbox from the outside, whilst the female Great Tit was inside, and in an attempt to defend the nest she may have got quite agitated and messed up the nest by accident. I then decided that this probably wasn't the situation either. I doubt that the female Great Tit could have  caused this much damage to the nest, even if she was being very defensive. 

My final thought, and the one which I think possibly is the right one is that another small bird managed to get into the box and ruin the nest and attack the eggs. I searched online for any other records of this and found this video on youtube of a House Sparrow destroying 5 Blue Tit eggs in a camera nestbox, as well as this video of a House Sparrow killing some Blue Tit chicks in a nestbox. It didn't also mess up the nest in these situations, but it may have been that the messy nest in our camera nestbox has been caused by a fight between our female Great Tit trying to protect the nest, and any intruder that was attacking the nest. Other thoughts are that it could have been a rival Great Tit in the nest competing for the nest site or something, but I'm really not sure. Whatever it was seems to have destroyed the other 3 eggs/chicks that where in the nestbox, as I have still not seen more than 2 chicks in the nestbox. 

The Great Tit parents were still doing their best to feed the remaining two chicks and were coming in frequently to feed them. The female was still sitting on the chicks for quite a lot of the time as they were still quite small, and also popping out occasionally to get them some food too. However, although the male Great Tit was coming in often, he was really struggling to get the food to the chicks as they were hidden under that huge layer of nesting material. He just couldn't physically get to the chicks most of the time. And when the female was sat on top of the chicks, she was also very well hidden under the nesting material and pretty inaccessible to the male who was bringing in food for her and the chicks. 

Despite these difficulties, the two chicks survived the night and continued to be fed yesterday. The female has been constantly re-arranging the nesting material, and we do now have colour pictures again as the material seems to be clear of the side windows, but it still looks a complete mess. Because of this, the male was still struggling to get to the chicks to feed them, although apparently there were a few successful feeds from him, via the female. The video below shows a collection of the clips that were recorded yesterday:



Amazingly, the chicks survived the night again last night, and apparently feeding has continued throughout today as well. The male is still bringing food in which is great news. The real question is though, how long can this go on for? I'm not sure how many of the visits from the parents are actually resulting in successful feeds to the two chicks. I think the male Great Tit is pretty crucial at this stage. As the female is still sitting on the nest some of the time, and not bringing in food all the time, I'd say most of the food is coming from the male at the moment. If he were to give up on this situation now, I'd call it game over. If he sticks with it, and the chicks start to grow to a size where they can move around a bit and accept the food from the parents more readily, than this might not be a disaster just yet, it's really difficult to tell at this stage. The thing that went wrong for our Blue Tit family a couple of years ago was that the male bird disappeared and the female couldn't cope with feeding the chicks, sadly meaning the nest was a failure. I just hope the same thing doesn't happen here. 

Also, my family has been out for most of today and haven't been watching the camera too much, so I'm not sure what the full situation is. But the clip below gives you an idea of what the nest looks like today, and what stage the chicks are at right now. The nest structure has improved a little more, and the parents seem to be able to find the chicks better under that pile of nesting material. The other good thing is that there seems to be plenty of insect food around. The problem with this situation is not the frequency with which the parents are coming into the box with food- more that they can't seem to work out how to get the food to the chicks properly. The only other positive thing I can think of is that, with only two (I think) chicks in the nestbox, they may have a better chance of survival than if there were more left. But we really will just have to wait and see. The video below shows the male Great Tit coming in to feed the female, who then passes the food onto one of the chicks.



And these two images show the two tiny chicks in the nestbox under that layer of nesting material. As you can see, they are still really very small and vulnerable at this stage.

I will keep you posted as much as I can on what is going on with this nestbox, however exams are my priority right now and so I will really mostly be focussed on these over the nest few days. I will get round to replying to comments, and commenting on other people's blogs as soon as I can, but I just wanted to get this post out today before it turned into too much of a task to keep things updated. As it is this post is a lot longer than I expected it would be. 

Anyway, thank you so much for reading and if you've left a comment over the last few days thank you for those too- I have read them. I'll be back with more soon! 

Great Tit Still Incubating Eggs (May 11th-14th)

Just another quick update on the Great Tit nest. Things still seem to be going pretty well, with the female still incubating eggs and the male feeding her frequently. She's been incubating the eggs now since the 1st/2nd of May, so the eggs will hatch out anytime in the next day or two I reckon, as incubation usually lasts 12-14 days. In case you missed it, I added a post for the 10th May showing all the stuff that's been going on in the time between the 5th and the 10th. And this video basically shows what's been going on the last few days.

I compiled the video below with some of the clips I've been getting through Dropbox. Because of exams at the moment, everything is kind of getting thrown together at the moment, so none of these posts are particularly great, but I want to keep things as updated as possible. So yeah, here's the video I put together, watch in 480p if you can :D 



That's all for today's post really, just another quick update. Will be back with more soon :D

Nestbox Update (5th-10th May)

Just a quick update on the situation with the Great Tit nestbox at home. Been getting video files through Dropbox since my last post, but upcoming exams have stopped me from uploading them and posting on my blog. The video below shows a few of the things which have been going on over the last few days. Quite a bit of the footage is in black and white as it was recorded early in the morning or in the evening. 

Basically our Great Tit female is still incubating the 5 eggs in the box, and has been since around the 2nd of May. So it will only be a few days before the chicks begin to hatch. The male Great Tit has apparently been feeding her very frequently, and a couple of these feeds are in the video below. My family aren't watching the camera all the time, so the fact that they've recorded the male feed the female so many times really shows how often he visits. Hopefully this will bode well for when the eggs hatch and there are chicks to feed too. 



Since I made that video a couple of days ago, I've received a few more clips via Dropbox, so I'll sort those out and probably upload those later today. I didn't want to combine the two posts, as it's been quite a while since my last post and I thought it would be good to split up the footage over two posts. Because of this, I've posted this post for the 10th May when the video was put together, even though all the text was written on the 12th. Congratulations if you're still following what I'm saying here!

Anyway, back off to do some more work now, got exams coming up very soon so have limited time for blogging. Thanks for reading and catch you later :) 

Male feeds female Great Tit

Just a quick update on the camera nestbox today. Got a picture sent through on Dropbox yesterday showing the male Great Tit feeding the female whilst she was on the nest- remember I'm not actually at home to view all this action, my family are sending me videos and pictures from the nestbox via Dropbox to me here at uni which, so far is working very well. But it does mean that quite a bit of the time, no one is watching the camera to report on what's going on all the time. So although this was the first recorded time the male has fed the female, it could well be that it's happened a few times before this without being noticed. 

The picture below isn't very good but it clearly shows what's going on. I'm really not sure why the "take picture" option on the capture program produces such poor quality images but hopefully I'll be able to work that out sometime.

Since this happened, I've been told that the male has been into the box quite a few times to feed her, which is good news. I was pleased to get an (albeit short) video this morning showing the male Great Tit feeding the female again. This is the first time it's been recorded on video was really nice to see. Not sure what he feeds her but it looks like some kind of insect to me.  



I may well update this post as the day goes on with more videos/photos as I get them, but I just wanted to get this post done early-ish so I could get on with some work in the afternoon. 

Enjoy the rest of your bank holiday weekend :D

Still 5 Eggs

It seems the Great Tit clutch is finished at 5 eggs in our camera nestbox, as there wasn't another egg laid today. I think the female had already skipped a day at some point, so 5 looks like the final number. 

This seems unusually low to me, but a look online suggested that somewhere between 5 and 12 eggs are normal, so it seems we're just at the bottom end of this scale. I also know that nests in gardens or more urban areas in general tend to contain less eggs. Our Blue Tit nest in 2011 contained 7 eggs and this was a little lower than average too I think. I suppose it gives the parents a better chance of raising the chicks when they hatch, as there will be less mouths to feed. 

I was at home today briefly, as I needed to get a couple of things done back home, so I was able to watch the nest for much of the day. Our female Great Tit seems to be incubating the eggs properly now, and is on the nest around 70% of the time during the day, and then obviously all night when she is roosting. She seems to fidget around rather a lot, not looking comfortable for too long, just as our Blue Tit female did a couple of years ago. Watch in 480p if you can :)

Later on in the day I decided to try and record the Great Tit going into the nestbox from outside in the garden. So I left my capture program recording the inside of the nestbox while I set up my camera on a tripod outside and started recording on that. I hadn't actually got a proper view of the Great Tits going into the box before I recorded this video, and I hadn't quite realised how much of a squeeze it is for them to get through the hole. The metal protector on the front of the box has a 28mm hole, which is supposed to be suitable for Great Tits, but it seems a slightly larger hole might be better. 

Anyway, the video I managed is below. Watch in 720p if you can :) 



One thing I haven't seen yet is the male feeding the female whilst she's on the nest. As you can see in the video above, the female calls for him quite a bit, but he doesn't come in to feed her. He does however visit the garden quite a lot, and it might be that he has fed her outside the nest. 

I'm back at uni now this evening, so I'll be sent any photos/videos via dropbox over the next few days again. Anyway, thanks for reading and enjoy your weekend :) 

Nestbox Diary 2013 Update - 5 Eggs

For a few reasons, particularly work, I've been unable to post anything about what's going on in the camera nestbox over the last few days, but I've still been receiving images captured by the rest of the family back home via Dropbox and I'm happy to say the last few days seem to have gone pretty smoothly. 

There are now a total of 5 eggs in the nestbox, and the female Great Tit has started incubating the eggs. I don't think this is the end of the clutch yet but I could be wrong. I do know that garden birds have a tendency to lay fewer eggs, as there is a lower chance that the chicks will survive (our Blue Tits only laid 7 eggs when we followed them a couple of years ago). There were 2 or 3 eggs in the box on the 29th. So its possible that, if there were 2 eggs at this point, she has laid an egg a day since then or, if there were 3 eggs by this point, she has skipped out one day sometime between then and now. 

The only thing I've been receiving on Dropbox today has been images, as they are much quicker to upload and don't slow the internet down too much at home. The images below were all captured today at various points. 

And finally, a picture of the female asleep for the night: 

I may actually be back home on Saturday as I need to be home for a couple of things, so I should be able to give a more detailed update on what's going on when I get back. Until then, thanks for reading and have a nice evening :D 

Nest Final Touches & 2nd Egg

I woke up this morning to find that the female Great Tit in our nest box has laid the second egg. Unfortunately you'll have to take my word for it though! Great Tits seem remarkably good at hiding their eggs in the nest, and almost all day the nesting material was obstructing the view of both eggs. 

Other than this, much of the activity that's been going on has been the female making final adjustments to the nest. A few times she brought in a few extra bits of hair and wool to line the nest. It looks rather cosy in there now which is good news if last nights temperatures are repeated tonight. A couple of clips I recorded today can be seen in the video below.



Late this afternoon I headed back to uni which means I can no longer see what's going on in the box. However, I think I may have a solution sorted. I've been using a program called Dropbox for quite a while now- its a really useful bit of software that allows you to copy files into your "dropbox folder", which appears on all PCs that you have dropbox installed on. I use an old laptop at home for recording nestbox footage on, so I decided to tell my capture program to save any recorded files into my dropbox folder on this old laptop. The files, once saved in that folder are automatically uploaded to cloud storage. This takes quite a while as my home internet connection has a very slow upload speed. Once the file is uploaded, it's automatically downloaded onto any other PC's that are switched on, and connected to the internet which have dropbox installed and signed into my account. So as soon as the file is uploaded from my old home laptop, it automatically downloads onto my uni laptop. Still following? Well done if you are!

So basically I'm relying on someone at home recording a few clips on my old laptop. I did think for a while about working out a way for my capture software to automatically record short clips at set times of the day, but I don't think this is possible, and would have relied on the laptop being on all day which isn't particularly good from an environmental perspective. I think getting people to record clips should work okay though but we'll have to see, as it's not something I've done before. 

I did think about attempting to live stream the nest footage to the sidebar of my blog or something, but I don't currently have any live streaming software, and I have a feeling it would be such a pain to set up. 

Anyway, that should do it for today. Hopefully if all goes to plan I'd like to get a post up every day with the progress of the nest box. I think I'll have a little thing in the sidebar explaining the current situation, so that even if I don't have time to post, there'll be an update somewhere on the blog explaining where things are at. 

Camera Nestbox Diary 2013

It's been two years since we last had any activity in our camera nestbox and this year it seems we have been lucky again. Camera Nestbox Diary 2013 is go!

Last weekend whilst I was still home for my Easter break from uni, I happened to notice a Great Tit going into the nestbox with clumps of moss in its beak. This years spring has been pretty late, so seeing nest building start this late isn't a surprise at all. I had noticed Great Tits investigating the box prior to this, but this was the first time I had seen one bring in nesting material. 

The issue was that the camera wasn't in the box at the time- I had taken it out months ago due to the fact it had stopped working for some unknown reason. I hadn't been able to work out whether the issue was related to the camera itself, or the cable, so I decided to just bring it all inside to avoid further damage to the camera over the winter. I decided I would try my luck and connect up the camera again to see if it would work, and somehow it did- no idea why but I wasn't complaining. 

After connecting it all up, there wasn't too which activity for the rest of the weekend- I only saw the Great Tit enter the box twice more, and it was on the hole of the box a few times as well. It seemed as though the nest building process had slowed right down- although I'm aware that in many cases, nest building can include a couple of days here and there without much activity. So I wasn't too worried about the situation but I was hoping to see them a few more times over that weekend.

On the Sunday morning I went back to uni, meaning that if there was any more activity, I wouldn't be able to see it. The rest of the family had been occasionally watching the box early in the week but there was apparently limited activity. I popped home from uni this weekend as I went to the last match of the football season (I support Oldham as this is where my Dad is from), and made sure to check the nestbox camera as soon as I got home. I was surprised to find a fully completed nest. There had clearly been a fair amount of progress in the box as the week went on. 

At about 19:35, after watching the camera for about half an hour, the female Great Tit appeared at the box. She spent about 3 minutes pecking at the hole of the nestbox, which I found quite interesting, as this usually happens when the birds are checking the box out for the first time. She eventually came into the box, shuffled around for a bit, re-arranging the nest, and could be heard calling a few times as well. Then I noticed something that I really wasn't expecting. As she was moving material around, she revealed an egg in the cup of the nest. It had been covered up quite nicely by the nesting material prior to this hence why it couldn't be seen. These birds do seem remarkably good at hiding their eggs in the nest. 

After about 8 minutes, she finally started settling down for the night. This seemed quite early to me, as it was still easily dark at this time and lots of other birds were still active around the garden as well. The video I recorded is below. I decided to try and enhance the video in an editing program a little to make it look a little better. The colours aren't great on this camera, and the relatively low evening light didn't help either, but I was happy with what I recorded. The other issue with this camera is that its angle of view is quite narrow, meaning the nest takes up the entire screen and you can't see the walls of the box. This wasn't too bad when filming the Blue Tits nesting a couple of years ago, but the Great Tits, being larger birds take up a lot of the frame. I noticed that you can actually buy little wider angle lenses for the nest box camera, but I feel this may be a job for another year. Anyway, enough talking, here's the video I got:




So here we are, with another family to follow. Hopefully these Great Tits will have a better time of things than the Blue Tits of 2011, but we shall see. It's been interesting to note the difference in nesting times between these two families. Our Blue Tit female in 2011 finished building her nest and laid her first egg around the 20th of April. So this Great Tit female is over a week behind our previous Blue Tit family, but this was to be expected, as we've had such a late spring this year. 

So, tomorrow I go back to uni which really shall be difficult to do given all that is going on here. I have a couple of plans up my sleeve to try and still get videos uploaded whilst I'm away but I'm unsure of how exactly things will work out as of yet. Whatever happens with the recording side of things, I'm excited for what lies ahead for this Great Tit family. We'll just have to see how it goes. I'm guessing a second egg will have been laid tomorrow morning, and I'll probably post again before I head back to uni. Until then, enjoy the rest of your weekend and I'll be back soon! :D 

Walking in Somerset & Fyne Court

So yesterday, given the continuing sunny weather, and the warmer conditions than we are getting today, we decided to walk in the countryside to and from a National Trust property called Fyne Court, near to our holiday house here in Somerset. The conditions were pretty much perfect for walking, with temperatures around 13/14 degrees and low wind.

We started off the walk at the top of Lydeard Hill, where we parked the car. The view from this spot was incredible...



We then set off on the way to Fyne Court. The habitats around here are so varied that all sorts of wildlife can be seen. One of the first birds I saw on this walk though was a rather more common one, a blue tit hiding at the back of a tree...

Great tits have been one of the more common birds I have seen on the holiday so far. The "teacher, teacher" call has been heard frequently all week.

The walk involved walking on bridleways, footpaths, through fields and short parts on minor roads. The rapeseed fields are now a brilliant yellow colour and was quite a sight in the sun...

Eventually, after what was a fairly long walk, we got to Fyne Court. After a bacon sandwich and a much needed drink, we headed around the grounds, which is more a nature reserve/nature trail than anything else. Find out more about Fyne Court here. Once again, the sound of great tits could be heard when we got there. I stopped for a few moments to take this video of a male great tit performing the classic "teacher, teacher" call which I have become so used to in the holiday so far. The video is really shaky and I wish I had brought my tripod now, but you can really hear the sound of the call very clearly. 

Blackcaps have a lovely call, not dissimilar to the robin, which could be heard at several points throughout the trail... 

After finishing the trail, we stopped for a much needed cream tea. But even as we were sat outside, the wildlife action didn't stop there. A rather tame pair of chaffinches came in to eat the crumbs around the tables, and allowed me to take some pictures that I was pretty happy with. I was surprised that they came in so close to allow me to take the pictures. They are one of the more tame birds, but its not that common that you get as good a view as this... 

The female chaffinch showed a fungal growth on its left foot, something which is so common in chaffinches these days. It didn't really appear to be affecting her too much though, and it was only hopping around on the ground that looked uncomfortable. 

And then the male chaffinch returned for one more photo...

And the female retreated to a nearby branch for a while... 

... Only to fly down from her perch for one more meal... 

And that was that, all in all a very good day out. I still have a couple more posts for this holiday to come yet, but one of them is likely to be quite long, so it could be a little while before that one is posted. Anyway, hopefully the weather warms up a bit over the next couple of days ready for Easter Sunday :D

College lake in the sun

-- NOTE - This post was done in March 2012, but I have posted it so that it appears as having been published on 19th June 2011 -- 

College lake is one of my favourite reserves around my area to visit. Its not only a huge wetland habitat but contains a lot of scrub and woodland too, meaning a very large diversity of wildlife is attracted. Highlights there for me in the past have been sightings of a hobby, as well as a huge range of wildfowl. The lake itself is man made, and I think I'm correct in saying the site was originally a chalk quarry before it was flooded to form the lake which now makes up the majority of the reserve. The photo below shows the view across only a small part of the lake, with the sun shining on the water...

Due to the diversity habitats there, there's generally something to see all the way through the year. Whenever I go, I usually try and visit the feeding station they have there which is always very busy and has some interesting species. The first bird to show up though was one of the more common ones, a Robin. This one looked a bit scruffy but came up close for a nice photo...

Chaffinches were pretty much a permanent feature on these feeders, and it was rare not to see any there at any one time...

One of the birds I wasn't expecting to see at the feeding station was a yellowhammer. I've seen them plenty of times in the wild before, but never feeding with other birds at a feeding station. This one was happy to feed on the floor, picking up all the seed that had been dropped by the birds on the feeders above. The photo below isn't great and is more of a record shot but I'm happy that I got at least one shot of it before I left.

Larger scale feeding stations like this one also attract other ground feeding visitors though. Rats were pretty common there, which I can imagine is unpopular with some visitors to the reserve. I don't really have a strong opinion either way on them, although it did appear that numbers needed controlling a little here. The photo below came out quite nicely in the end.


Given the time of year, it was unsurprising to see flocks of blue and great tits with a number of fledglings. The majority of them were feeding themselves but there were still a few younger fledglings being fed by their parents. The suet balls were the food of choice, held in a sort of basket feeder.

After a few minutes of watching, I spotted a different bird moving around with the flock of blue and great tits- a marsh tit! I hadn't seen one before so seeing one up so close was quite exciting. Telling them apart from willow tits is very difficult, but I think I made the right decision here. I could be wrong though so please correct me if I am :) The cap of this bird was slightly glossy, which is one of the only differences between them and willow tits, so I think I'm right on this one- please correct me if you think I'm wrong. Being much less common than any other bird at the feeding station, and also in significant decline, the smart looking marsh tit grabbed my attention for a while, and was probably the best part of the trip in general.

So onto photographing it then... well lets say I probably could have done a better job! The first photo below was so nearly a brilliant photograph. The marsh tit was sat on the wire that can be seen in the photograph. I had set up my camera perfectly, zoomed in and focussed on the wire, but just as I pressed the shutter button, the bird took off. So the photo shows the bird just about to fly out of the shot. At the time I was really disappointed to have missed such a good opportunity. But after looking at it a few times, I actually quite liked the effect I had created. Although the bird came out quite blurry, I like the way its positioned in the photo, and also the nice blurred out background. Overall, the picture actually looks quite arty- completely accidental but it definitely turned out a bit better than I thought it had...

I did manage to get a couple more shots, but both are record shots really

So moving on from the feeding station, I then wandered around the reserve for a while. There's a path which you can follow which pretty much takes you round the whole lake, and through all the other habitats they have there. When I was there, I didn't really think to take any photos of the overall scene of the reserve. So the only pictures like that that I do have show only a small part of the reserve. The photo below shows a blurred out teasel plant in the foreground, with part of the lake and one of the newer hides in the background.

On the way round the reserve, a flower I hadn't seen before caught my eye on the edge of the footpath. I had no idea what it was until I spoke to someone walking past about it. He told me it was a Bee Orchid. I'm useless on flower ID but this one will definitely be remembered for next time- it has a very distinctive appearance. They are apparently relatively widespread around the UK if you know where to look. This BBC page explains some of the basic information about where to look for the various orchid species in the UK. And this site explains in more detail about Bee Orchids in particular, such as its distribution and the factors which are threatening it as a species.

And then I came across these daisy-like flowers (identification please). I used to know what they were but I've forgotten now :)

I also need some identification help on the bird in the photo below. Looks to me like it could be a juvenile pied flycatcher? I thought it could have been a juvenile whitethroat originally but it looks to be the wrong shape and with the wrong type of bill. I could be wrong though. The photo is pretty poor- was taken from a distance and cropped quite a lot. The bird was also sort of hidden in a bramble bush so it only appeared occasionally. See what you can make of the photo..

That's all for now everyone, keep checking back to the updates list as I still have a lot to add.   

Winter images

Last Friday was supposed to be my last day of school before the Christmas holidays. But I opened my curtains in the morning to see a snow-covered garden. School was cancelled, and I was so glad to be able to have a lie-in. The photo below shows the garden as the sun came up.

It had snowed pretty hard for much of Thursday night here in South-east England, and it was a cold morning on Friday. This cold weather and snow has really attracted a lot of interesting birds to the garden, as well as the usual visitors. We have seen a Great Spotted Woodpecker visit the garden almost daily for the last two weeks, which has been great to see. Also, two Blackcaps have been around, as well as two Redwing, which seem to be very numerous around here at the moment. Last week, we saw a Brambling visit the garden too, which was feeding among the Chaffinches.

Great, Coal, Blue and Long-tailed tits have been visiting in groups, surrounding the feeders. A photo of a Great Tit can be seen below. Still no sign of any roosters in our camera nest box, and actually, I haven't seen any daytime visits either. Hopefully this will pick up into January. I very nearly got a good shot of a Coal Tit in our apricot tree, but it flew away at the moment I was about to press the shutter button on my camera!

Starlings were frequent visitors too, squabbling in numbers over who's turn it was to feed on the fall block. It was great to see a Blackbird look so at home in the garden too, as we didn't really see this in the summer/autumn. The feeders needed topping up frequently during the day. It made me think that it must be hard for a small bird such as a Blue Tit to survive in such cold weather. They really didn't stop feeding all day, showing that it really is important to feed our garden birds at this time of year.

Generally, you would guess that it is our smallest birds which struggle most in the cold winter months, and this is mostly the case. However, I recently learnt that Coal Tits survive surprisingly well despite their tiny size. In the book, "A Field Guide to the Wildlife of the British Isles", by Alice Tomsett, it says, "The Coal Tit survives well in cold weather as it feeds on insects living underneath bark".

Last Sunday, we travelled up to Oldham to see my Grandpa, to find that it had snowed there too! On a walk on the hills of Oldham, it became very difficult to see anything. You'll see what I mean when you see the photo below!

The photo has come out a slightly strange colour, but hopefully you can get an idea as to what it was like there. Because it was so foggy, it was almost impossible to see where the land ended, and the sky started.

The roads were pretty dangerous at this point, as you can see from the photo below.

Back in his garden, the local birds were out in the snow feeding, similarly to how they were at home. A few starlings dropped down onto an arch in the garden, and sat there, waiting for an opportunity to feed. It was great to see so many birds making use of a single feeder that day. The birds which were unable to get a spot on the feeder fed on the ground, eating any fallen seeds from the feeder.

With Christmas just two days away, I wonder how many people in the UK have snowy gardens on Christmas day. I suspect there will still be some in ours. Lastly, if you are travelling over the next couple of days, I hope you all have safe journeys. Have a great Christmas!

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)!

Norfolk birds

So, here I am posting about our family holiday to Norfolk which I have just come home from. We stayed in a nice cottage in northern Norfolk (rather near where Springwatch is currently being filmed at Pensthorpe Nature Reserve this week). The variety of wildlife seen around the garden and grounds of the cottage was amazing. I think I will share my Norfolk wildlife and plant sightings over at least 2 posts. The grounds of the cottage were amazing. My favourite part of the grounds was the small lake pictured below.

Pretty much as soon as we went into the back garden of the cottage for the first time, we saw Blue Tits were nesting in a small hole in a wall. The adults were seen flying in and out of the hole with insects all the time and it was difficult to follow. This activity was constant until later on in the week when the Blue Tits stopped feeding the young. We think that they must have fledged, although we have not seen any fledglings around. Of course it is possible that the nest was predated but the hole was too small for anything large to get in and take the young. The picture below shows the hole.

Also nesting nearby, but in the grounds of the cottage rather than the back garden were Goldcrests. In a conifer tree, a pair of Goldcrests were rearing young in a tiny nest on the end of the branch. The young looked very close to fledgling when I saw them on the first day of the holiday. It looked like there were 2 or 3 chicks crowded inside the nest. One of them decided to exercise his/her wings outside the nest, before returning to the nest cup. I just managed to get a picture before it hopped back inside the nest, which is seen in the top left image of the photo montage below. The nest was empty the next day so I am assuming they have fledged.

Other fledglings that were seen around were Great Tit (main picture in montage) and Coal Tit (bottom left photo in montage).

Also nesting in the garden of the cottage were Blackbirds who had built a nest high up in a shrub. Unfortunately, while the male was around, it only appeared to be the female who was feeding the chicks. Nevertheless, the female came in frequently with mouthfulls of insects.

The first picture below is of the female perched on the garden wall about to fly into the nest. The second photo is of the nest, which I managed to take a quickly and quietly. If you look carefully, you should be able to see the beaks of a couple of chicks. Maybe they will fledge next week. The photos were taken this morning before we left.

A flock of 15-20 Long-tailed Tits visited the garden twice and were very entertaining. They always look busy and never seem to stop. These little birds were flitting around the branches of a tree in the garden. I love the way they follow each other around. The biggest flock we have seen in our garden at home was made up of around 10 or 11 birds, so I was impressed to see such large numbers in Norfolk. I got a few photos of the tiny birds in action.

In the lake in the grounds of the cottage were Mute Swan cygnets and Egyptian Goose goslings. The cygnets were very closely watched by the adults and any threats to the cygnets were scared away very quickly. Also on the lake were Tufted Ducks and Mallards. The Egyptian Geese were often seen sat on the edge of the lake in the sun. The goslings were still quite small and were seen huddled together looking like a pile of feathers.

My highlight bird-wise in the grounds has to be the Barn and Tawny Owls that were seen flying around in the evening. A few evenings during the week, we walked to the barn near the lake to watch the Barn Owls. I think the Barn Owl must be roosting in the barn at the moment. We have seen it come out of the barn in the evening to hunt over the surrounding fields. I don't think they have young yet as they didn't return to the barn with any food.

Barn Owls are such incredible creatures and it was fantastic to see such good views of them as they hunted silently in the dark. We only saw the Tawny Owl once, but heard it much more often. They could well be roosting or nesting nearby too. Also seen near the barn were bats in large numbers. We also saw a Treecreeper one evening just as it was going dark on a tree near the barn.

Away from the cottage, we saw plenty of other birds. National Trust properties often have gardens that are fantastic for birds. We went to Felbrigg Hall, a National Trust property near the cottage. Click here for the link to the website. As I was looking around the gardens, I came across a House Sparrow terrace nestbox in use by a Great Tit. It was seen bringing food into one of the holes.

A Chaffinch was seen singing on a tree.

And Jackdaws were seen at another NT property, Blickling Hall. Click here for more information on the property.

Many other birds were seen on various walks throughout the week. On the beach near a town called Sheringham, Little Tern were seen at the shore. I had to check the bird book to make sure they weren't Common or Sandwich Tern. They certainly were little and were struggling to fly against the wind. Just slightly further along the coast near some cliffs, I saw a species of pipit. This bird, I was unable to identify even with the bird book. I am guessing it was either a Rock Pipit, or more likely due to its brighter outer tail feathers, a Meadow Pipit.

Also seen in Sheringham were Starling:

And finally, on a sunny walk in the countryside, a female sparrow on the roof of a house. It's great to see the declining House Sparrow in its well-known habitat.


Other bird highlights were: Nuthatch, Marsh Harrier (seen at Blakeney Point), Reed Bunting, Whitethroat, Meadow Pipit, Yellowhammer, Chiffchaff, Cuckoo and Great Spotted Woodpecker. Blimey, isn't it amazing what you can see in a week!

Finally this posting comes to an end. I did chatter a bit didn't I?