The Blue Tit has been bringing in nesting material today after almost emptying the box of previous material over the past few days. Although it seems a slow process there is still plenty of time as a lot of things seem later this year!
Take a look at this short timelapse video showing what the Blue Tit was up to.
It’s been a rainy day here and the female blackbird has spent most of it on her nest in the ivy keeping her eggs warm. Unfortunately the wind and rain has pushed some leaves in front of the camera lens. We will attempt to clear these if we can tomorrow.
The Blue Tit has been visiting Box A quite frequently today removing nesting material and replacing it. By the end of the day the box was almost empty again. It has been raining all day here and later in the evening the Blue Tit visited the box and decided to roost for the night there.
We are not sure if we will get nesting Blue Tits this year or not but we will keep our fingers crossed and keep watching.
Yesterday the 3rd blackbird egg was laid in the nest and the female has started incubating them today. The male has been very busy bringing in lots of food for the female ranging from berries to worms! You can see in the picture that he also took an interest in the camera looking at the nest but it didn’t seem to bother him and he went on his way. Blackbird incubation is normally 13 to 14 days so we expect the eggs to start hatching, if all goes to plan, around the 16/17th April.
Keep up with the progress by checking the Live Cameras as always. We also post updates to our Facebook page and Twitter feed.
Our blackbird nest now has 2 eggs in! The female spent around an hour and a half on the nest around midday, after which the 2 eggs were seen. We expect a couple more eggs over the next two days.
The bird boxes have had a makeover for this year and we now have two hole nester bird boxes, each with a different sized hole. Box A is a 25mm Blue Tit bird box. It is fully equipped with 4 cameras which can all be viewed on our Live! Console.
The Blue Tits have started to take an interest in this box and have been trying out bits of nesting material that can be seen here in the picture. Fingers crossed they will approve of the new box and take up residence this year!
Don’t forget you can follow all the action here on the diary and by watching our Live Cameras
About a week ago we noticed a female blackbird taking nesting material into our Ivy. On closed inspection we found she had half built a nest. As we were updating the boxes and cameras we took the opportunity to add a camera to this nest.
She continued to build and the first egg was laid at around 1pm this afternoon. She returned later in the evening to roost on the nest. Last time we filmed blackbirds she laid 4 eggs so we are expecting similar this year. You can keep up to date by following this diary and also checking the Live Cameras.
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There are 7 healthy chicks in the nest box at the moment just on the verge of fledging! They are all crowded around the hole looking out, practising wing flapping and getting encouragement from both parents.
Unfortunately 2 of the chicks that hatched didn’t make it as they hatched a couple of days after the others so were a lot smaller and probably didn’t get quite enough food. The 7 remaining are all looking very healthy and well looked after so fingers crossed for a successful fledging.
Remember you can watch this all live using our Live Webcams
There are still 9 healthy chicks doing very well in Box 1. Both parents are bringing in a very nutritional diet to the young birds with varying sized caterpillars, bugs, insects and seeds. The female is now quite distinguishable from the male due to the fact she is looking very scruffy!
The young birds are now starting to open their eyes a bit more and also starting to preen feathers and flap wings which is a good sign. Looking at the dates we estimate they should fledge around Friday 27th/Saturday 28th. We will have all the cameras recording and you can follow it using our online webcams.
