But what is this? This image was captured a couple of hours after the nesting wriggle shown on the previous page. It appears to show a slight ruffled area of feathers indicated on the image by the arrow.
This is exactly the same spot that Fluffy first showed her fluffiness. Could this be Fluffy? Or one of her offspring?
Another picture of the tuft of feathers on the left hand side of this bird's front.
Clearly there is something odd with these feathers. Whether the bird is Fluffy, only time will tell. Three seasons in a row would seem pretty remarkable to us!
However, it is early days yet and there could well be competition for ownership of the box. Other females seen in the box don't appear to have this tell tale marking.
Oh, for a ringer! If only our birds were ringed, then the identification problem would be resolved.
Now what's this bird and what is it up to?
Unfortunately, the following images are not very good as the light was dull and the sky covered with white cloud. However, they look interesting so we have included them anyway.
Judging what happens next, there seems to be a bluetit inside the box and what looks like a nuthatch on the roof wondering what is going on inside.
A second or so later, a second bluetit comes along and disturbs the nuthatch. Is this the partner of the bird inside?
You can just see the face of the bluetit inside in the hole. (Thanks Mike, for pointing this out to me!)
The nuthatch landed on the roof of the nest box. There was no trace of what happened to the bluetit except for a bit of tail in the bottom middle of the picture.
Here you can see fairly clearly that the other bird is a nuthatch. We would prefer that the bluetits continued to occupy the nest box, but if any other bird took it over, a nuthatch would be great.
From later images we know that the nuthatch leaves straight after this shot and the poor besieged bluetit inside the box all this time then departs.
We shall see if the nuthatch returns again later.