Bluetit Diary    Feb 2005 (4)

 

 

Saturday 19th February, 2005

At last the old birch tree has been removed and so I have been able to reconnect the internal camera to Box2.  This is just as well as visits to Box1 have been few and far between recently.

What's this - wingless flying?

I could understand this if the bluetit was shooting out of the nest  box, but unless it has done a quick 180 degree turn, that is not what has happened here!

You will see that the leaves providing the background to pictures of this box have disappeared.  Our next door neighbour has been concerned about the ivy growing up this oak tree and asked the tree surgeon to cut it back while he was here to remove the old birch tree.  While there are some advantages to us in having the ivy removed, the external pictures of Box2 now look a little stark!

We are starting to get the familiar exchange sequences again.

Here a male (you can see that it is male from its broad white head band - that's according to the Bigg theory of sexing bluetits you understand) is inside the nest box.

His partner follows him in and he crouches at the top of the picture, we wonder whether that could be to avoid being hit by the incoming bird.

The male has now departed leaving the female in charge.  Note the much narrower head band this bird has when compared to the image of the male two images above.

But what's this - could it be a one winged nesting wriggle, Fluffy's speciality?

( For new readers, Fluffy is our name for the bird that occupied this nest box for the last two nesting seasons.  As well as having under feathers that appeared to carry on growing during the nesting season, giving her an increasingly fluffy appearance, she performed what we have called a nesting wriggle with only one wing at a time stretched out.  If you want to read more about Fluffy, go back to the diary for 2003 and 2004.)