After some disturbingly quiet days, with nothing captured at the weekend, and only a brief glimpse of a Blue Tit perched on the hole at breakfast on Tuesday, I was starting to think we'd been abandoned. Plus, there is some serious Blue Tit activity in the ivy on the other side of the garden, and the box is just in front of the shed where the noisiest Blackbirds I've ever heard are getting to know each other. However, at 8:38am today, the camera caught a ten second inspection...
...so fingers crossed we are still on the shortlist. Although I was not very pleased to see a fat bee exploring the premises...
...or his wasp friend a couple of hours later!
Still a week before the consensus nesting time starts, let's hope for the best!
...investigations have reached the roof. The gardenature box has a perspex skylight to let the light in and create the beautiful colour pictures. If you are a house hunting Blue Tit though, that needs careful investigation! More activity afterwards, so I assume it passed.
Unconfirmed reports were saying that more Blue Tits have been showing interest in our box last week, and this morning I caught a brief glimpse of one bird perched on the hole. I set the camera up to shoot ninety minutes of footage to skim through at 8x, and at 9:35am struck gold. The following three minute footage has had about 60 seconds of Blue Tit free time edited out.
I was doing jobs around the house, and didn't see the action until I was whizzing through the replay. I must confess to being very over excited - I think this project is going to work! The presence of the partner bird in the final few seconds of the clip must mean things are getting serious.
According to everything I've read, I think we still have two and a half weeks before they start building the nest. One final point of interest, the first tit on the extended visit can be seen playing close attention to the integrity of the entrance hole. Any birds that use a nest box are vulnerable to a woodpecker or squirrel enlarging the holed to get the young out. Rest assured our box has had a metal plate screwed on the outside - any Blue Tit family will be safe from that threat at least!
