Last year's birds
Fluff roosts
Fluff is usurped
A truly excellent site about these birds
David
Jones's
site with nesting Parus caeruleus, about 8 miles away
Visitors since 27th September 2000:
1st May 2000. This has been a fine day. The birds have been very active; in the space of ten minutes in the middle of the morning, the male bird came five times with food for the brooding female. The female sits for between 15 and 45 minutes at a time, only leaving the nest for short periods. She turns the eggs frequently, up-ending herself and poking around amongst the clutch. The longest absence that we observed today was 22 minutes. An average of 11 temperature difference readings with the bird sitting gives us a figure of 3.2 Celsius plus or minus 0.6 degrees, between the box thermometer and the outside thermometer. As the box thermometer is embedded in the wooden floor of the box, the eggs must be considerably warmer than this reading would indicate.
Nine eggs are visible today.
The bird frequently adopts the roosting position during the daytime, but usually for only ten minutes or so at a time. She seems to have an inbuilt clock that reminds her to wake and turn the eggs. These birds cannot be said to do anything in a slow and deliberate manner. Every motion is sudden and jerky, twitchy almost, and this makes taking still pictures off the video difficult.
The male bird has been singing lustily in the garden all day. The female appears at the nest hole and surveys the scene before setting off.
The bird is still adding appreciable quantities of straw to the box. From time to time, feathers blow around in the draught.
There may be another egg tomorrow.
2nd May 2000. There was no additional egg this morning, so the birds seem to have closed their clutch production at nine eggs.
Here is a picture of the unfurling oak leaves on the common. The eggs will hatch in about 12 days time, so our birds seem to have done their timing to perfection.
The male has been feeding the female at sporadic intervals today. Here she is awaiting an arrival, expectantly.
In due course the male arrives.
3rd May 2000. It is a tedious job waiting for the eggs to develop. Our bird spends a lot of time asleep, and when she gets up to go out for a comfort break she is still fluffed.
Activity occurs when unwanted visitors approach the box.
Activity also occurs at feeding times, about every 20 minutes on average.
Also, of course, the eggs need turning periodically.
4th May 2000. Today was a cold grey day in May. The bird inspects the eggs closely every time she returns to the nest. This takes less than a second. Can she count nine eggs in a second?
5th May 2000. A warm and sunny day, during which the bird was waited on "beak and claw" by her partner, with a constant stream of food. She looks sleeker, larger, more relaxed, fluffier, and definitely cootier (she is infested with fleas which cause much scratching with beak and feet).
6th May 2000. Hot humid and sultry weather. The bird is even more restless and itchy. Climbing out of the nest cup requires wing work .
7th May 2000. The warm weather continues. Last night, a cursory inspection of nest box 2 surprised us by revealing a sitting female. Today we moved the video camera on its microwave link down to the bottom of the garden and were rewarded by pictures of the female emerging from the second nest-box,
and later of the second family's male arriving with a scrumptious-looking caterpillar, to feed to his mate.
The weather then dissolved into heavy rain and thunder, and the camera was hastily withdrawn, under cover. It is surprising to us that the birds have moved into the second nest-box, as the nest appeared to have been abandoned. Perhaps the pressure of the necessity of finding a nest site pronto prompted another family to take over the earlier building works.
