Here is another picture of the bird that uses its tail as a prop. As we have never seen this behaviour before, and it has occurred twice in the same bird box, we are assuming that it is the same bird, to be called Fantail henceforth! This time it is sitting with its back to the camera, but its tail is in a similar spread-out position to the one we captured last Tuesday 4th February.
Today, and for the latter half of yesterday, we have been watching the box in the front garden (Box2), as we have noticed that most of our pictures so far have been of the box in the back garden. Probably this is because we can see this from our living room and observe the antics of the bluetits outside as well as inside the box.
We have noticed that a frequent visitor to the front box has an area on its left side, just under its wing, where the normal smooth down has been roughed up. The arrow points to the affected area. Elizabeth referred to this as the fluffy bird, so we have decided to call it Fluffy - let's hope that the two named birds are the final occupiers!
If you look very closely you can see the fluffed up area on this picture too.
Fluffy seems to be very hesitant when going into or coming out of the box. She (it?) is also very interested in whatever it is at the top of her box and frequently flies up there to inspect. At least since we installed the collars last year, there is no way that a bird can climb up to the space alongside the camera!
Finally, here is a picture of a sparrow terrace nesting box that Elizabeth received at Christmas from her "wish list". Sparrow numbers are in sad decline, and this is our attempt at providing an alternative nesting site, since modern houses tend to be unhelpful in this respect. It has been installed on the side of the house amongst a Virginia Creeper. Let's hope the sparrows appreciate our efforts. If we detect any signs of activity, we might be able to move the infrared camera round to monitor it, though this will mean that we cannot look for any hedgehog and fox activity at night!
Relatively few visits to either box today - which was odd because it was a brilliantly sunny day. However, it was very cold. Last night's minimum temperature here was -3.9°C and it did not get above freezing until mid morning. It reached 4.8°C in the afternoon but that was the best it could do.
There has been a distinct drop off in activity during the last few days. These have been bright but cold, so it could possibly be the temperature that has reminded our birds that it's not quite spring yet. While we have been waiting for the real show to begin we have again been speculating about the sex of the visitors to our two boxes.
We have got to know each pair of birds well enough in previous years to be able to tell which was male and which was female. The conclusions that we came to were that the male has slightly darker and more ragged crown feathers and a broader white collar around the back of his head. A female has head feathers that are a bit lighter in colour and smoother, and her white collar is much thinner and sometimes almost non-existent. The female is also the one that does nesting wriggles. Could we use this information accurately to predict the sex of the visitors to our bird boxes?
A few pictures may help you to see the differences.
First Box1.
These birds both have a wide collar, and there are many other pictures like these.
Next Box2.
Again, both birds have a narrow collar. None of these pictures appears to show the difference in the head feather colours, although it is possible that this may be something that develops when we get properly into the breeding season.
Our belief is that the bird in the top two pictures is male and the one at the lower two pictures is female. So far this season, we have not seen a bird doing a nesting wriggle in Box1.