Bluetit Diary    Feb 2011 (8)

You can just see that this bird is taking something into Box1.  There is some stuff visible on either side of her body.

And here you can see that the female, which we shall call Amy, has a beakful of dried grasses ...

... which she drops inside the box with little fuss.

Some birds seem to delight in making a tremendous fuss of dropping nesting material, hurling it around the box with gay abandon.

Ten minutes later a bird that we presume is Amy's partner, comes to the nest box roof to see how things are developing.

We shall call him Joe.

Less than 20 seconds later, Amy comes to the box again - has she brought anything with her?

Well she has, but it's a very small something!

Again she just drops it on the floor of the box.  It looks as though it consisted of one small thread of moss.

A quarter of an hour later and Joe is back.  But where is Amy?

Here you can see her at the top left of the picture.  She seems to have a rather bigger load this time.

Is she looking for applause?

She seems to have a bit of a struggle getting it inside ...

... but finally she bursts through the entrance hole into the nest box.

Now it's inside, it looks quite a large beakful.  Well, as usual, there is plenty in our lawn this year!

Again, after all the effort getting the moss into the box, she calmly drops it on the floor of the box.