Today we're going to look at Box1. We still haven't given names to the pair of bluetits that are evidently hoping to make it their nesting place this year.
The male has a funny three pronged tail so Malcolm has suggested, and Elizabeth has finally agreed, that he should be called Neptune. So Neptune it is.
The female is more difficult. Last year's female was called Fantail as she frequently sat back on her tail which then spread out in a fan like shape. In addition, her head band was unusually wide for a female, most of whom seem to have narrower bands than their partners. So let's look at the female this year.
Well! Here she is sitting back on her tail and sporting an unusually wide head band. Fantail? Would two females coming back a second year be too much of a coincidence?
Without having some help and getting the birds ringed we shall never know - unless we have a most unusual bird like Fluffy!
So we have decided to call her Fantail again anyway.
Here she is again a bit later. Her tail looks very Fantail like!
What's this?
Suddenly, we noticed that she had something in her beak. It was a piece of dry grass ....
.... which she decided to place carefully on the floor of the box.
Just over an hour later, she picks up the grass and takes it out again!
However, she probably didn't drop it as 10 seconds later she's back with the grass again.
You can see that Neptune's tail still looks decidedly trident like!
A bit later Fantail comes in with some green moss. She's starting early this year if this is for real as opposed to just practice.
She flies in with it, dropping some on the way in, and it looks as though she can't decide what to do with it.
Then she suddenly swings round and hurls it across the floor of the nest!
This was the only time she brought bedding in today. The nest box floor still looked like this at the end of the day.