Here Claire is caught mid wriggle. When she is not in it, the location of the
nest cup is very indeterminate. However, both great and blue tits appear to prefer
the nest cup to be as far away from the nest box hole as possible - to make life more
difficult for predators I suppose.
Claire normally comes to roost for the night at about 7.30pm but tonight she is rather
earlier - she arrived at 7.17pm. After a period of wriggling and pulling and pushing
at the edges of the nest cup, she finally settled down for the night shortly before the light
went out at 7.37pm
Here she is in the standard sleeping position - head firmly tucked under a wing, the
effect being to make herself look like a fluffy lollypop!
Kate's nest also looks as though it is more or less finished, though I'm not sure that Kate thinks it is. She has been in and out continually
today and most of the time she has been bringing in more nesting material. She seems
to use four types of material - black or white feathers, fresh green moss, fine hay
and a thicker straw-like material.
At the start of the day, we were a bit concerned to see the great tit was back to have
another poke around.
He is certainly giving the box a thorough examination.
He even jumps on to the nest box entrance hole to take an even closer look - or was
it to try out the hole for size?
However, after a short while he moves on. Perhaps he found the hole too small.
It even looks a tight fit for Kate!
It is about 9.30am and Kate enters the nest with a large white feather
Kate is visiting so often that it is not possible keep a precise count of her visits.
She is typically making one visit every 5 minutes for periods of an hour or two - and each
time she is bringing in more nesting material.
Perhaps she feels the urge to lay?
It's now about 10 o'clock and she has moved onto dry looking straw-like material.
Where she is getting all this stuff from we haven't a clue!
(Actually, that's not quite true as Elizabeth has put some white feathers on the lawn
which have been taken from the stuffing of an old cushion.)
Half an hour later, she is collecting some fine pale hay - or is it something else?
It's now early afternoon and Kate has reverted to bringing in some more green moss -
a material she hasn't brought in much for quite a while.
Now she's back on the dried hay-like stuff - or is it some more fluffy white feathers?.
All these different materials with their differing colours and textures have made her
nest box look a bit of a mess to our human eyes. Still, the important question is
can she fill it with fat and healthy chicks?