Our Nesting Blue Tits

The time now seems right to mention our nesting Blue Tits.  I bought a bird box with a camera from Aldi in February last year and although I put it up last spring, it hadn't been used by any birds until now.  Then in March of this year two Blue Tits started to pop in and out fairly frequently, although there was no sign of any actual nest building.  The female bird would regularly fly in and peck away at the wooden floor of the nest box and this would be accompanied with wing spreading and fluttering for up to five minutes at a time before leaving.  Sometimes both birds would enter the box briefly with the female looking submissive to the larger male.

This behaviour went on for most of March and into April with no signs of nest building at all.  The female would peck so hard at the floor of the box that it could be heard from quite a distance away and it sounded quite like a woodpecker.  After doing some research on the net it seems that this activity is very common but no-one has a definite explanation for it.  Some think the bird is testing the structure to check that it is stable and secure, whilst others think it's part of the mating ritual.  Our birds didn't actually peck away at the entrance hole like some do, but to me it went on for so long and with such vigour that she seemed to be trying to make a hole in the bottom of the box, perhaps to allow air to flow through the nest - just my two penn'orth though.

Anyway, the good news is that in early April the birds (probably only the female) started to bring in some moss and grassy bits. Each night when we got home from work we'd anxiously look to see what had happened during the day.  It was very strange because sometimes there seemed to be less material in the box the box than on the previous day and we suspected that the box might be being raided by another bird, although we never actually saw this happen. And then last week the female bird started to bring in feathers and so it was starting to look serious - but I do know that even at this stage the nest can still be abandoned.

On Monday of this week (18/04/11) I noticed that our other nest box (which is quite close but lower down and without a camera) was being investigated by some Blue Tits - first one and then both of them went inside the box.  I assumed that they were the same pair that we'd been watching over the last few weeks.  When one bird started removing nest material from the top box to the lower box I thought they were considering moving home, but then it clicked - this was a new pair of birds looking to set up their own nest in the lower box by stealing material from the upper box. 

I soon confirmed that there were at least three birds when I saw one on the camera in the upper box and two other birds squabbling outside the lower box.  These must have been the two males because they started chasing each other all round the garden as one defended it's territory from the other. So the mystery of the disappearing nesting material was solved and the culprit was caught with feathers in its mouth.

But now back to the main story: last night (21/04/11) the female bird nestled down and spent at least some of the night in the box - I don't actually know how long it was there because I went to bed at about 11pm and it wasn't there at 6am in the morning. And. as I go to bed tonight, the bird is once again snugly tucked in - things are definitely looking promising so watch this space.

Live Video Feed

As soon as the feathers had been brought in, I investigated how to make a live video feed from the nest box camera for my blog and eventually I settled on running a streaming video server from my home computer using the excellent WebCamXP software.  While the birds are nesting. you'll see the live video stream at the top of the blog page.

This is my frst go a running a live webcam and although the quality is not brilliant, you can see what's happening.  I may also post some recorded videos of good moments when there are any worth viewing.