Bluetit Diary    Apr 2006 (7)

 

 

Tuesday 18th April, 2006

Claire appears to think she has more or less finished her nest, and looking at it, we agree with her.  She has only visited the nest box about 5 or 6 times today.  When she has been in, she has just wriggled around in the nest cup, re-arranging rather than adding to the nesting material.

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?