Bluetit Diary    Mar 2005 (5)

 

 

Friday 11th March, 2005

It's about time we named some of our birds - I always find this a problem as no name sounds right to begin with.  We are fairly sure the female in Box2 is Fluffy, but just in case we have decided to call her Kelly until perhaps we know for sure.  Kelly is another gutsy fighter and I'm sure she would be flattered to have our female bluetit named after her.

We have decided to call the male Boris.  To us this has suitably fertile associations which we hope will lead to lots of chicks!

This was the sight that greeted us this morning when we first turned on the cameras - at last one of our birds had decided to make a start at nest building!

Several times this morning we have images of Kelly with a beak full of moss.

From our observations, it seems that only the female builds the nest, the male just gets in the way - and even occasionally removes some of the nesting material!

Here comes Kelly with some more moss!

 

There's plenty more moss where this lot's come from.  I'm definitely not allowed to use moss killer at this time of year!

Boris has come in to see what's up.  It may look like he has some moss in his beak, but I can see from other images that this is an optical illusion.

 

While Boris is admiring her handiwork, Kelly comes back in with some more nesting material.

But what's all this?  Kelly is taking some moss out again!

This is definitely the wrong thing to do.

Kelly now seems to be as energetically removing the moss as she was bringing it in earlier!

Here she has just collected another beakful having come into the nest without any more moss ...

... and out she goes with it!

Back to collect another bunch of moss.

And off she goes with it!

By 11.20 the nest box was empty again.  Well I suppose it's all good exercise!

Last year Fluffy (yes I know this may not be Fluffy) spent many days just messing about like this before finally deciding that the time for play was over.  She then built the nest in just a few days!

Bye all!

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