Bluetit Diary    Jan 2004 (3)

One of the problems of writing this diary is that at first all bluetits look the same!  However, our luck might be in this time as the first bird to enter did not have a complete white band around the back of its neck.  This can be seen quite clearly on the image alongside.  We cannot remember seeing a bird like this before.

At about 10 past 9 we had two birds in the box together.  The  traditional view would be that these were the male and female birds of a pair with the male introducing his partner to the nest site he had chosen for her.  We are not so sure.  If this were the case we would expect to be able to observe different behaviour between the two birds and this we cannot see at this stage.

The bird at the top was the first one in and the newcomer is the bird at the bottom.  This has a more normal narrow white band round its neck.

A couple of seconds later, they still seem to be assessing the situation.  Neither looks particularly defensive - perhaps this is a couple. 

The top bird - the male? - left shortly after leaving the female(?) in the box.

This shot and the next have reminded us of what one of last year's birds looked like at this stage in the season.  Fluffy, we called her that for obvious reasons, started with us in February and all you could see of her fluffiness was a small rough patch on her side in an identical position to this bird.

If you want to see our first shots of Fluffy click here.

You can Fluffy as she looked a few weeks later here.

Another possibility is that the condition is genetic and this is one of Fluffy's chicks!

We have already seen this bird outside the nest taking some of the mealworms we put out for the robins and have wondered if this could be Fluffy after her autumn moult.  Certainly, the speed with which this bird took to the nest seems to indicate a basic familiarity with the nestbox. 

For now, we shall call this bird Fluffy2 (Fluffy too?).