Intro and Nest Building

THE BIRD BOX

A few years ago the family bought us ..... well Carol really ..... a bird box to go on the side of the house and be connected to our TV, so we could watch developments.

Incidentally I've had to be a bit careful with the title, because the normal "tenants" are blue tits! Some of you will, I'm sure, recognise the potential problems!

Home, sweet home. For Blue Tits

And here it is, on the outside of the house, where it'll get the sun morning and midday, but not be too hot.

The connecting wires go through the house and down to the TV in the living room. Comes up as "AV" when we switch around the remote!

In 2010 we had a brood hatch but because we were away we didn't actually see them fledge. By the time we came back they'd all flown.

In 2011, sadly although a pair nested and hatched several young they all died and the parents didn't try again. We had a lot of scrabbling one morning .... we can hear them through the TV link .... and when we looked the parents were shifting the last dead chick out.

Last year we had no tenants at all, so during the winter we got Graham to climb up .... I'm not too good on ladders these days ..... clean the box out and put in some wood shavings, similar to what was in there when it was new.

To our delight, back in mid April we started seeing activity; we watch carefully nowadays. However the birds didn't like what we provided and threw it all out, replacing it with soft top branches and moss.

By 19th April we were able to take this picture. It's not all that easy to get decent pictures off the TV, but the female's clearly here, getting on with nest building.

Apparently it's the female which does all the building, but the male brings odd bits to her, and also feeds her!