Bluetit Diary    Mar 2005 (20)

Our story this morning starts with Carlos inside the box, perched on the exit hole, "flashing his white cheeks", as described in British Tits, to the world outside.

Eventually, he attracts his partner, Megan to come to the box's entrance..

Carlos immediately jumps down inside and awaits Megan's entrance.

For some reason, Megan does not want to enter the box and she stays on the entrance hole looking around her.

After a while, Carlos gets fed up with this waiting game and decides he has had enough.  He therefore flies up to the hole and forces his way past Megan and flies off.

Of course, Megan now decides that entering the box is what she wanted to do all the time, but remembering what happened on an earlier occasion, wasn't sure whether she would be doing the right thing by going in while Carlos was still there!

Once she is inside, she again finds the mess that Carlos left when he roosted in the box on the previous night.  She appears to pick up some of his droppings ...

... and removes them.

This time, she doesn't start a shuttle service to clear up the box but disappears for quite a while.  

Carlos has been roosting in the box every night since the first time he spent the night there.  We are concerned that a male roosting may put the female off the site as a nesting site.  We haven't had this before - previous roosters have been female, and have left the box scrupulously clean.

Only time will tell!