Well, yesterday we thought we saw the first egg in Box3, but unless there is a hidden second female in this box too, which I rather doubt(!), there must have been two eggs yesterday as today there are clearly three!
So the first egg was laid in Box3 on Saturday 30th April. The Summary has been amended accordingly!
With a bit of imagination, you can see 16 eggs here.
Bess stopped laying about a week ago and the surprising thing is that she did not start incubation before 30th April, when she started at around 4.20pm.
Yesterday she incubated from around midday, and today she has been sitting on the eggs all day. (Apart from the occasional food and comfort breaks of course!)
Another shot of around 16 eggs. (There must be at least one under the black feather to the right of the nest cup!)
This pair of females get along because Bess is particularly tolerant of Spikey. If you see one bird pecking at the other it is always Spikey. Bess just turns the other cheek!
Here Spikey is sitting on the eggs when Bess comes into the nest box. Spikey reacts as though it was Hugh with some food for her.
She even leans forward and tries to take the non-existent morsel from Bess's beak!
Bess goes off for a short while but pretty soon she is back. This time she does a nesting wriggle.
And another one.
Then she does a spot of spring cleaning in the nest cup - completely ignoring the fact that Spikey is sitting in it.
This turns into yet another nesting wriggle.
Notice that at no time has she been aggressive towards Spikey. She just ignores her!
All this is just too much for poor old Spikey, who gets up from the nest cup . . .
. . . and leaves the nest box.
That is the way Bess manages to get the better of Spikey. I noticed this type of behaviour by one of the females last year too. I wonder whether they are the same pair? One of the two certainly looked much more scruffy than the other.
This was also true in 2013. In fact that year we called one of the females Scruff!