After a cold and wintery Easter weekend, things are looking up again in our bird boxes.
We have decided to call the bluetits in Box3 Abby and Angus again this year. We know that the chances that they are the same birds as built the nest in this box last year are very low, but have done it to allay the ghosts of the brood of chicks that died within a couple of days of hatching last year.
This is clearly a female bluetit doing a nesting wriggle - welcome to the nest box Abby!
More important, we seem to have a pair of bluetits here. This is one of them ...
... and this photograph taken at the same time, shows the other.
Welcome to Angus!
Over in Box1, the great tits are starting to become more active. We have called this pair Gelda and Phil. I think that this is Gelda, the female.
It is difficult to find a picture of our nesting birds that shows the front of the bird. This is important for great tits as the only way we have found of telling the sexes apart, apart from their behaviour, is to look at the black stripe down their fronts. Generally, a male's stripe is longer and wider than a female's.
This bird clearly has a black throat, but you can see no sign of a black stripe down its front.
What's this - is Gelda bringing nesting material into the nest box?
It is! This is the first time she has done this this nesting season.
A few minutes later she is back with another load. This looks promising!
It turned out to be less promising than we had hoped. This second load was the last of the day!
Another half sight of the front of a great tit. There's no sign of any black stripe.
Another thing that Gelda does that is unusual - she often seems to take a nap in the middle of the afternoon. She stayed like this for about four and a half minutes shortly after four o'clock.
Another view of Gelda's front feathers.
At six o'clock when the cameras turned off, it looked as though Gelda was preparing to roost in the nest box again.