Bluetit Diary    Feb 2005 (1)

 

 

Sunday 6th February, 2005

The good news is that Box2 has now been installed in the oak tree.  The bad news is that the camera cables have not yet been connected because we are still waiting for the tree surgeon's visit.  We cannot, therefore, show you any images taken from inside the box.

Also, it is not going to be possible to show the front view of this box because there is no place where the external camera can be mounted to achieve this.  The best we can do is to show a side view of the box once the camera has been reoriented in its present position.  We hope that tomorrow we will be able to to this.

We continue to see bluetits flying around in the oak tree, so let's hope that they will soon be investigating the box more closely.

Box1 is receiving several visits to its nest hole each day, but usually a bird only actually goes inside on two or three occasions.

The pattern is much the same each time.  The bird enters, looks the box up and down, and then hops onto the exit hole.

This bird spent about 13 seconds inspecting the view from the box.  We hope it approves of what it sees!

It has another final look up at the camera at the top of the box before departing.

 

 

Monday 7th February, 2005

I decided that we could wait for the tree to come down no longer and have put up Box2!

It is not connected to our computers yet so we cannot see inside it, but I have managed to re-orient the external camera so that you can just see the face of the box.  Any bird looking in or coming and going will now be visible!

The box is now attached to the oak tree I have previously mentioned, and faces roughly north east.  If I swing it a bit more towards the external camera it will face nearer to the east and get the full early morning sunshine.  We had this problem in 2003 and it meant that on a sunny day, the inside pictures were badly affected until late morning.  Therefore, when I remounted it in early 2004 I made sure that it was facing more to the north, roughly in the direction it now faces.

Now I will have to get the internal camera linked up so that I can see whether I have this problem in its new site.

The image alongside was taken about twenty past five and the light had dropped away considerably.  Tomorrow will show it in a proper light!