Jess has now been incubating her eggs for several days. As is usual, nothing exciting has happened so far.
However, if it is a bit tedious for us, one would have thought it must be more so for Jess - presumably female birds are programmed to get some satisfaction from incubating or the species would have died out years ago!
Bluetits normally incubate their eggs for about 12 days before they hatch out, so we should expect Jess's clutch to start hatching around 1st May.
Becky has usually been covering her eggs when she leaves the nest but this time she has given us a better view of them than usual. There must be at least 7 eggs here.
Since she laid the first on 14th April, either she has not been laying one each day or she has several eggs hidden - or perhaps it is a bit of both!
So when will she start to incubate? Today she came to the nest box earlier in the evening than usual - at about 6.10pm.
is the best picture Becky has given us of her eggs yet. You can clearly see 8 eggs
This was taken at about half past two. I looks to me as though she has started to incubate.
This is Becky again 10 minutes later. This looks like incubation to me!
At last! Becky has left the nest box without bothering to cover her eggs - another sign that incubation has started.
You can clearly see 9 eggs here.
This was taken at about half past six and shows Becky tucked down for the night with her head under her wing.
This is in spite of the fact that it is not dark for nearly 2 hours yet!
If she has started incubating, then her first eggs should start to hatch around 8th May, a week after Jess.