Only small whiskers in the first picture.
But BIG whiskers in the second!
It's slightly cooler today and quite a breeze developed in the afternoon.
Fantail seems to have grown whiskers!
Fluffy was very busy with her nest this morning. In 1hr 50min she brought material into the nest 14 times out of a total of 17 visits. You will see that by the end of the day her nest looks very cosy indeed.
This morning we noticed that Fantail kept bringing in fine strands of something - presumably to start making a soft lining for the nest cup.
We could not see where she was getting it from, so Elizabeth went upstairs to watch from the bedroom window. She was surprised to see that we were the providers of this material. We had planted a buddleia last autumn, to replace one that had died - we think possibly from lack of water. There was Fantail, tugging at the brown garden string tying up the new plant. She really had to work hard for it, so we decided to give her a little help. We cut several short lengths of string, and split each of them into several strands. These were attached to the buddleia, and for good measure a few feathers were scattered on the ground nearby. Our intervention stopped her activities temporarily but she was at it again later in the day and by the end of the day the string had gone.
The first picture shows her with the string
But in the second she just has some more hay.
First we think it's more straw - but the second picture shows a big feather.
Now that the nest is nearly complete, you can see the reason for the nesting wriggles we keep referring to. This is the movement she makes to form the nest cup when the nest is full of moss, hay - and string!
She keeps stopping to shove it all into place
By the end of the day, Fluffy's nest has also had a lot of work done on it and is now nearly ready for the eggs.
When do you think they will start laying?