It's now nearly the end of March, and I still haven't started regularly updating this diary! So how are things progressing in our three boxes?
I shall start with Box3 where there has not been much activity. You can see from this picture that was taken today that no nesting material has yet been brought into the box.
As regular readers will know, there was a fight in this box in early January, but since then not much has happened. This may be because building work next door has disturbed the birds at a critical time.
The most recent activity occurred on 21st March when a typical Male/Female handover took place.
Here the male enters the box.
Now he is inside, the waits for the female to follow him.
Where is she?
He must have heard her coming as he crouches low to keep out of her way. He shouldn't be impatient as it is only 5 seconds since he entered the nest box himself!
In comes the female ...
... and immediately the male departs. No "what do you think of it, girl?" here. The time stamp on these two photographs shows they were taken only a quarter of a second apart!
She is left alone in the box.
Less than 30 seconds after she entered the box, the female is on her way.
That was the last time both birds were in the box together. Still, in 2010 nest building in Box3 didn't start until 15th April, after which a clutch of 8 eggs was laid from which 5 chicks fledged! So we mustn't give up all hope.