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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.
Back home from uni for the Easter holidays and just felt like getting a blog post up today. Just a couple of pictures of a singing robin in late afternoon in poor light.
Used a high ISO to try and compensate for the dull conditions (have always preferred digital noise over blurry images), but the results are still not great. Going to try and get out early tomorrow morning to get some more photography done.
Also we have a blue tit pair building a nest in our camera nestbox again, so this box is being occupied for the second year running, and for the 3rd time in 4 years. I'll see if I can get some footage up, but the only way of recording videos is by using an old laptop, so I'll see if my patience holds up enough to get the videos recorded and transferred to my current laptop to be uploaded. Never got round to finishing last year's nest box diary but only one chick managed to fledge from the great tit nest- hopefully this year will be more successful. Thanks for reading, probably back tomorrow for more. Won't make any promises though, you know what I'm like!
As usual, we were away on holiday at New Year staying with family and family friends (about 20 of us in total). This year we were in Lincolnshire, a part of the world I had never really visited before. A very nice part of the world if a little, er... flat. Like really flat. Very odd given that I've spent nearly my whole life living in the Chilterns.
Despite the lack of undulation in the landscape, its a very down-to-earth part of the country with great people, some beautiful countryside, and nice towns. Lincoln in particular was brilliant- well worth a visit if you haven't been already. Being on the wash, there's also some fantastic nature reserves, one of which we visited whilst we were there.
I've included just a few of the photos I took during the week. The first few photos were taken at RSPB's Frampton Marsh Nature Reserve. These yellowhammers were feeding on the ground underneath the feeders at the visitor centre. Pictures taken through glass in poor light, so not very good (I'm getting too good at coming up with excuses for poor photography these days)!
We visited the reserve twice during the week. The second visit was late in the evening and we were lucky enough to see a gorgeous sunset- one of the best I've seen in years. I recorded a video just as the sun dipped below the horizon. It was a windy day so the background sound was horrible. As a result, I used one of Youtube's copyright-free tracks to add as background music. Couldn't quite find anything that fit the video, but this is the best I could do.
I also took a still image. For some reason, it seems as though Blogger has messed up the colours of this image when I uploaded it. The original picture shows the grass in the foreground as being much darker in colour than it is in the version you see below. Could be something to do with the compression of image files when they get uploaded but I'm not sure. The result is pretty horrible to be honest, but you probably noticed that the photo isn't even flat anyway, so I'm not too bothered.
And finally, here's a picture of a house sparrow which I actually took over the Christmas holidays that wouldn't really fit in any other posts.
Thanks for reading and I hope 2014 is a good one.
