Well, there was no sign of Fantail roosting last night. We switched on briefly at about 10 o'clock to check, but the nest was empty. The prospects of a brood of chicks in Box1 do not look good.
Neptune is distraught. He can be heard calling continually from the trees at the bottom of the garden. He still, occasionally, looks into the nest box to see if she is there.
But perhaps all is not lost. This picture was captured at about half past eight this morning. The bluetit is not Neptune as its tail makes clear. Is it Fantail? I think not as it didn't enter the box and was behaving in a cautious fashion.
It landed on the entrance hole and looked inside and all around for about a minute before flying off. Could it be another bluetit in search of a nest site?
Still, the prospects in Fluffy's box are looking good. Barney has been feeding Fluffy from time to time, but this morning he has gone into overdrive.
This is the first feed we caught, within a couple of minutes of turning the cameras on. He then fed her eight times in the next hour - in spite of the fact that Fluffy left the nest briefly a couple of times during this period.
This is feed number four. Sometimes Fluffy leaves the nest immediately after being fed. Perhaps it's something she doesn't like or perhaps it induced the need for a natural break - who knows. It just seems a little odd.
Just after nine, Barney came in again with a small item of food only to find the nest empty. He clearly didn't know what to do. He kept standing over the nest cup, sometimes bending low over the eggs, presumably in order to see if a tiny chick had hatched so that he could feed that instead.
Finally, he gave up and flew out of the nest again.
Viewing the happenings in Fantail's box during the day, we have become very confused. This is because it appears that the new (presumed) female of the pair has a tail remarkably like Neptune's! This has led Elizabeth to concoct all sorts of wild theories - such as Neptune was in fact another female, a lazy one, who thought it would be a good idea to trick Fantail into building a nest for her. When Fantail rumbled what was going on, she walked out (flew out?) on Neptune, as any right thinking bluetit would.
Neptune then brought on her boy friend, removed all the feathers that Fantail had taken great efforts to collect, and is now preparing to lay her first egg! Like it? No, nor do I but it's a great story!
This is the tail. Until today I would have said that that definitely belonged to Neptune, however it is the tail of the bird that is holding its wings out and has removed nearly all the feathers from the nest.