There is definitely something very odd about Box1. I think we have two females laying eggs there. Amy, who appears to be the roosting female, lays hers in the early hours of the morning and the other female comes into the box and lays hers at around 7.30 to 7.45am.
Here is one of the females, the one we have called Amy.
Here she is again.
The females keep their eggs covered most of the time. Here two are visible, but since the first was laid on the 12th April, I would have expected 5 eggs now from one female, let alone from two!
Perhaps we have only one female laying after all.
I think this is the other female. She is a bigger bird than Amy but this bird doesn't look like Joe.
Another shot of the second female. She has a much wider white head stripe than Amy.
Amy is on the nest when this second bird arrives.
If this was Joe, Amy would be begging him for food and Joe would be facing her. These two birds don't want to acknowledge the other's presence. Certainly they don't make eye contact.
You can see the wide head stripe the second female has.
Suddenly, Amy decides she doesn't like this and she flies out of the box.
Several hours later, towards the end of the day, the two females meet again. Again, Amy is on the nest, it's nearly roosting time, when the other female arrives with some hay.
Again, Amy flies off leaving the other female by herself in the nest box.
I think this is Joe. Is he the mate of both females? Or is there another male lurking somewhere?
You can see his head feathers are streaked with white.
Finally, it's Amy who roosts in the box as usual.
My theory is that she lays her egg before she leaves the nest box in the morning. It is the other female who lays her egg at around 7.30am as shown in yesterday's post. (A similar thing happened at around 7.40am on Thursday 14th April though you will have to go to the webcam and replay the sequence as I didn't post about it.)