The 2011 catch up marathon

As you probably gathered from my last post, I have a lot of photos and video from last year still to post on this blog that I never got round to doing. What I have decided to do though since my last post is to post all the photos to the date they were actually taken. So basically, I will be filling in the gaps of last years archive so that everything will be posted on the date that it happened. All of the photos I have taken show the date they were taken, so it will not be a difficult task.

I realise though that you won't want to go trawling through my 2011 posts to look out for stuff that happened in some cases nearly a year ago. So I decided I will use this post to add links to the the posts I do. Obviously I appreciate that not many of you will want to check this out, but its there if you want it, and is useful for my own purposes as it will allow me to organise all the stuff I still need to post. This will be a gradual process so stick with me and I'll do my best to add the posts as quickly as I can. So here is the list...

• 25/02/2011 - Blue tit pair visits conservatory camera nest box  - turns out I had already posted this video, but I only realised after I had posted this. This post though has more info on the visit than the original and I also added it to the camera nest box diary for 2011
• 02/05/2011 - Male blackbird searching lawn for worms (photos)
• 03/05/2011 - Starling visits bird bath (photos)
• 19/06/2011 - Visit to college lake in summer (photos)

Thank you for checking this out, much appreciated :) Keep checking back every now and then if you like, as the chances are a new post will have been added. I do have a lot to post! Also expect to see camera nest box postings from last year appearing on the list too, I haven't forgotten about those :) Its just the fact that I have to use my old (about 6 years and very slow) laptop to record any camera nest box footage, so anything that gets recorded needs to be transferred to the laptop I use for everything else. The only reason I don't use my current laptop for recording is because the sound doesn't work on the capture software, despite my best efforts to try and sort it out.

Anyway, have a great day folks and enjoy this weather while it lasts :D

Catching up

Hi all :) Before completely starting a clean sheet with this blog, there is some stuff which I really want to get posted without it getting buried under all my new photos and videos. Most of it is photos and videos from last year. Trouble is, once you've got into the habit of not updating it for a while, it can get much harder to get back to regular posting again. I really would like to get back into blogging and I won't ever leave this blog for good.

Obviously, should I go on to uni next year (which is the plan), blogging is pretty much going to be impossible, mostly given that I won't have a garden to post about :D The great thing about blogging though is that its entirely your own choice how or when you post. There should be no pressure attached. I've found in the past that trying to do a post when you're not motivated to do it is almost pointless. So in the future I will post whenever I can, and whenever I feel like it really. And if we have nest box activity in our camera next box, material on that will definitely get posted.

Cheers for sticking with me, and hopefully I'll be back on track with this from now on.

So, lets kick off then... back in May when I left you, I was half way through what was looking like quite a promising camera nest box diary. A pair of blue tits had built a nest, the female laid 7 eggs, and all 7 chicks looked to be growing quickly into healthy little blue tits. Both parents were regularly feeding the chicks mostly with caterpillars which seemed to be in decent supply. Unfortunately though, the male parent seemed to disappear at a pretty crucial time. I just didn't see him after he left, even feeding in the garden. So it might have been that he'd been eaten by something but I just don't know.

Anyway, things started to go downhill from here. The female blue tit was left to find food chicks by herself and was clearly struggling. She was spending far too long out of the nest looking for food. It seemed that the caterpillars which were in good supply a few days earlier had begun to run out, and she ended up bringing in suet from the fat blocks in the garden. She also spent too long sat on the nest at times and looked tired. The chicks became obviously weaker. I don't remember exactly how long the process took, but I remember being amazed at the speed at which a previously healthy looking nest goes downhill. Sadly, all 7 chicks died in the end after what had been an intriguing few weeks.

It was great though seeing that other blue tit nests around our area had been successful, as fledglings came to feed in our garden in the following weeks. And even though our nest wasn't successful, it was our first nest box diary and it was incredible to see what we did.

Anyway, enough of that, here's a few photos I never got round to posting last year :) I think these few photos were taken around the same time as the nest box diary actually, but I just didn't do anything with them as I was so focussed on the nest box at the time:

On the hunt for worms...

That's all for now, should hopefully be posting more catch up posts like this in the near future :)

I'm still here!

Hi everyone, just to let you know that I haven't given up on this blog. Its been months since I last posted and I left you half way through our next box diary. I do apologise about that, and I will finish off the diary when I can. It'll take me a while to get all the video together and everything, as its all on my other laptop, but you should be able to see that soon. I also hope to add a few posts to my blog earlier in the year, as a have a LOT of photos sitting on my laptop that I would like to share. Anyway, cheers for sticking with me, and I'll be back soon!