All seven chicks hatched

So its been about two days since the first chick hatched in the blue tit nest in the camera nest box at the end of our garden. Chick number 6 hatched yesterday, as it was getting dark, and chick number 7 hatched this evening. Both parents are feeding the chicks very frequently and the chicks are already starting to grow.

I was a little bit worried about the seventh chick, as it hatched about two days after the first. But I was happy to see that the very first feed after the seventh chick hatched went straight to the new chick. Both parents are feeding roughly the same amount each.

The video below shows the scene just after the sixth chick hatched yesterday- all six chicks looking healthy in the box. The seventh egg was hidden under the pile of chicks, so it couldn't be seen :-)

The clip below shows both parents feeding the six chicks (the female comes in first, then the male comes in after). The female then stays in the box and tidies up the nest before settling down on the chicks.

The clip below shows the male bringing in a meal for the chicks. As you can see, the chicks were already strong enough to lift their necks up quickly to accept the food from the parents.

The video below shows both parents feeding the chicks again (male comes in first, then the female). The female settles down on the chicks after she has fed them. She still spends a fair amount of time sitting on the nest, with one egg unhatched at this stage.

Later on in the day, I was starting to wonder if the seventh egg would hatch, or whether it would remain unhatched, as is quite often the case with one egg in a nest. So I was quite surprised when I looked over to my laptop screen to see Mrs blue tit eating an egg shell- the seventh chick had just hatched, almost exactly two days after the first egg hatched. I didn't capture the exact moment, but the clip below shows the situation just after the chick had hatched...

Shortly after the last chick had hatched, chick number 7 got fed, which made me smile- I was quite worried that the seventh chick was noticeably smaller than the others, given that it hatched later. I didn't manage to record that feed, but the clip below shows the parents coming in a few times, feeding the seven chicks. In this clip, it was difficult to see which chick was actually being fed, as the parents were in the way, but as I am watching the TV now, I can see that the smallest chick is definitely getting its share of the food.

So things are looking good at this stage, I just hope it continues. I sometimes do forget how lucky we are to be watching a family of blue tits bring up their young. We've probably all seen blue tit families nesting on programs like Springwatch, but it really is something different when they are in your own garden. Hopefully this nesting story will be a success in the end :-)

Five chicks!

The first time I checked our camera nest box yesterday evening was about 21:00, and our female blue tit was sat in the nest cup settling down for the night. After about 10 minutes of watching, she shuffled around and revealed a tiny chick underneath her! So at least one of the eggs had hatched yesterday while I wasn't watching. Whether there was only one at this stage, I didn't know. As she was preparing to roost for the night, she didn't move off the nest cup, so it was difficult to see exactly what was going on underneath her, especially given that I was watching under the Infra Red light, rather than normal daylight.

By this morning, three chicks could be seen. I recorded the first few feeds to the three tiny chicks. The male is feeding the chicks very frequently, and most of the feeds seem to be caterpillars- which is good news. I know its only day two but Its promising to see that there doesn't seem to be a shortage of insect food to feed the chicks.

The video below shows one of the first feeds from the blue tit male, at around 06:30. My alarm went off at about 06:00 for school, and the male was feeding between then, and when this clip was recorded...

Most of the food that Mr blue tit brought in was passed to Mrs blue tit, who was sitting in the nest cup for much of the day. She then passed on the food to the chicks beneath her. At times, Mr blue tit seemed as if he wanted to feed the chicks directly, without feeding it to the female first.

The clip below just shows the male blue tit coming in to feed the chicks, at about 06:45. He was beginning to get used to feeding the chicks when the female was out finding food for herself. He also removes the faecal sack from one of the chicks as he leaves.

The fourth chick hatched just as I was leaving to go to school, so I didn't have time to record it. However, when I got home, it was clear that five chicks had hatched, leaving two unhatched. The female is mostly still sat on the nest cup, keeping the chicks warm and incubating the remaining two eggs. Now and then, she will pop out to find some food for herself and the chicks. Throughout the day, she has eaten away at the bits of empty egg shell which should provide her with the Calcium she used up in the egg-laying process.

The clip below shows Mr blue tit coming in to feed one of the five chicks that have now hatched.

Our female blue tit is currently roosting for the night on her five chicks- the other two should hatch later tonight or tomorrow. This is getting really exciting now... I will keep you posted on what happens next. Fingers crossed, our blue tit family will do well :-)

Male blue tit feeds female

I thought I would post a quick video showing how our blue tit pair are getting on in our nest box. The male has been feeding the female several times a day, sometimes in the nest box, and sometimes in the surrounding trees. I have to say, even though this our first proper nest box diary, it is looking quite promising so far.

In the video, it looks as though the male brings in what looks like a small caterpillar, or maybe a bit of fat from the fat block feeder in the garden.

Hopefully, the promising start to this nest box diary will continue into the next few weeks. I'll keep you posted :-)

I came home today to find...

... Seven eggs in the blue tit nest in our camera nest box! I left you last Friday with a picture of the finished nest. I then went on holiday to Devon, in the hope that when we got back, our blue tit female would have laid a few eggs. She didn't disappoint :-)

We've been away for a week, so she must've laid an egg a day, so far without skipping a day. Blue tits start to incubate their eggs when the clutch is almost complete apparently. Our female has started incubating her eggs (although not full time), so I'm guessing she has maybe one or two more still to go. I will try to get up early tomorrow morning to see if I can catch her laying her last (or second last) egg. It may be that she skips a day tomorrow morning, as blue tits often do.

The video below shows the seven eggs, and then the female coming in to incubate them. She left the nest every 15-20 minutes, so she isn't always on the eggs just yet. I'm guessing she will incubate them for longer periods tomorrow.

I have seen the male blue tit feed the female outside the nest box several times over the last couple of weeks. Today, as I was in the garden, I saw both the male and the female go in the box, but because I was outside at the time, I was unable to record what was going on inside the box. The video below however shows the female coming into the box, taking a while to settle down on the eggs and then calling for the male, who didn't arrive this time. Turn the volume up to hear the female calling if you can.

I'm so glad now that I decided to put the camera in the box a couple of weeks ago when I noticed the female coming in with nesting material. It really is exciting stuff. I will post about some of the sightings on our Devon holiday soon, maybe not tomorrow though. Anyway, have a great weekend :-)

The finished nest

Mrs blue tit finally seems to have finally stopped bringing nesting material into the box, and the nest now looks complete. I will just leave you with a screen shot of the nest as I leave to go on holiday to Devon for a week...

The image doesn't quite show the colours that I am currently viewing live on my laptop screen but I hope you can get the idea :-) She still hasn't laid her first egg so I guess that will come whilst we are away. I wonder how many eggs we will see when I get back...

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

Nesting activity!

Back in late February, I posted about a pair of robins that were building a nest just on the other side of our garden fence. Strangely, despite the fact the nest was probably nearly complete, the robins disappeared, and the nest had been abandoned. We had no idea why it had been left unfinished, but our best guess is that it had been disturbed, even though we are unaware of anything which would have caused this.

So I thought they would have started to build a nest somewhere else- which they did. What I wasn't quite expecting was for them to build a nest in the robin box at the end of our garden. They managed to build an entire nest in the box without us noticing. It was only when the we actually saw the female sat on the nest incubating eggs about a week ago that we realised they were even there! It really is amazing how secretive they are. Every half an hour of so, we see her pop out of the box- probably to feed, before she sits on her eggs again. So far, things appear to be going well as far as the robins are concerned.

I thought it was a little bit late for any nesting activity in our other nest boxes this year, given that no interest has really been shown in any of them. However, whilst I was watching the robin box at the end of the garden on Sunday, I noticed a blue tit go into the camera nest box on the apple tree at the end of the garden. It went in and out several times, clearly with nesting material in its beak. The camera nest box is literally 2-3 metres away from the robin box, so I was amazed to see both of them being occupied.

However, if you read my last posting, you may remember me saying,

"Finally, I then moved the camera that was in the nest box at the end of the garden into the new nest box on our conservatory wall. I did this for two reasons:

The first reason is quite difficult to explain, but I'll give it a go! Basically, our camera nest box cable is split into two sections - the 10 metre cable which came with the camera nest box when we got it back in 2008, and a 20 metre extension cable which I bought in order to place the camera nest box at the end of the garden last year. The 20 metre cable has recently been chewed by something (again) - probably by a squirrel, and to avoid having to fix it again, it was much easier to disconnect the extension cable, and put the camera in the box on the conservatory wall using the 10 metre cable that came with the box in the first place. Secondly, and much more simply, the birds didn't seem particularly interested in using the box at the end of the garden anyway, so it made sense to just move the camera into the new box."

So the blue tits had decided to build a nest in the nest box which we had just removed the camera from. This was unbelievably frustrating, given that no interest had been shown in the nest box at the end of the garden until this point. So I wasn't sure what to do at this stage. I really wanted to introduce the camera to the box, but equally I didn't want to disturb the nest.

The first problem with moving the camera was that the 20m extension cable had to be repaired so that the camera would reach to the end of the garden. I'm very thankful that Dad was able to do this for me (for the 4th time)! I then took the connected the extension cable to the camera and got it ready to introduce to the occupied nest box. Then was the hard part; I wanted to wait for the female robin to have a break from incubating her eggs and fly out of the robin box just 3 metres or so from the blue tit box, to avoid disturbance to her nest- if that makes sense. Obviously, I also had to make sure the blue tits weren't in their nest box either before I introduced the camera. So when the time was right, I put a ladder up against the tree and put the camera in the blue tit box- which took just a couple of minutes.

Luckily, I had managed to line up the camera perfectly with the bottom of the box first time which meant I didn't need to go back and adjust the camera to disturb the birds further. I was so happy to see both the blue tits and robins return to their nests within 15 minutes of me introducing the camera. At this stage, the nest looked about 75% complete. The first video I recorded can be seen below. It was recorded at about 15:20 on Sunday:

The next clip shows her shuffling in the nest cup which appears to be in the back left corner of the box at about 19:00. She was visiting about every 10-15 minutes throughout the day, but I wanted to show the progress she had made in the 4 or 5 hours since the last video. Not a huge amount had changed in that time, but then she began to work much harder between 19:00 and 20:00, coming into the box about 15 times throughout the hour.

By 19:30, the infra-red function on the camera had kicked in, and the videos from then on were in black and white, despite the fact that the sun only set at about 20:00. The video below shows the female shuffling in the nest in black and white, with a small amount of orangey evening sunlight filtering into the small frosted resin windows on the sides of the box.

Eventually, at about 20:00, she decided to settle down for the night. This seemed to take forever though, as she shuffled around in the nest cup looking as though she was trying to get comfortable. After about 15 minutes, she relaxed a little and tucked her head underneath her wing. Even after this though, she seemed a bit restless, waking up to move some material around the nest cup or scratching herself.

That's all for now. I will post tomorrow about what progress has been made over the last couple of days in the nest box. Have a great week :D

Blue tit pair visits nestbox

-- NOTE - This post was done in April 2012, but I have posted it so that appears as having been published on 24th February -- 

The video below shows a pair of blue tits visiting our camera nestbox in late February. This video was taken when the camera was situated in the nest box on our conservatory wall. The male bird comes in first and has a very good check of the box several times, also checking he camera itself out by hanging upside down from it. The female follows him in towards the end, performing several nesting shuffles. This may be the pair that ended up using the nest box at the end of the garden that meant that I had to move the camera from the box that this video was taken in. 

Anyway the video is below. The reason why I never posted this video originally I think is because I had turned the sharpness of the video up too high when I was recording it, so the video sort of looked a bit unnatural. Looking back on it now, the video isn't quite as bad as I thought it would be.

This post is the first of my camera nest box posts that I have caught up on from last year. Keep checking back to the list of catch-up posts from last year as I'm still in the process of adding them in.

Oh dear, looking back on my posts last year, it turns out I had already posted this video! Just shows how much I had lost track of my postings last year. Anyway, I'll leave this post up for now as it gives a bit more information than the original post, which also had some other stuff on it too.