They started nest building three or four weeks ago whilst we were away in Gambia. We haven’t been very good at recording things this year, so I’m not sure when laying started, but they’re now up to eight eggs. Mrs Great Tit seems to be sitting now, although she does spend a good deal of time out of the nest. The male is bringing her food in regularly. Here’s a few snippets from this evening.

They’re a lot tidier than the sparrows we had last year. Lovely as sparrows are, they don’t make good viewing as they just filled the nest box with grass and completely obscured the camera. The great tits are far more co-operative. It’s not the first time there have been great tits in the box—a great tit roosted in there in 2009—but it’s the first time they have nested.

Last year sparrows took up residence in the box. It might have been nice to have the change, but sparrows are messy nesters. The huge ball of stuff that they piled in completely obscured the camera and we couldn’t see a thing.

We have seen a great tit roosting in the box in the last few weeks, but he seems to have given up on it.

It’s late. They went on May 19th last year and on May 23rd in 2008. They’re 22 days old now, which is also the longest we’ve had them stay in the nest. They fledged at 20 days last year, and 19 the year before. We really expected them to go yesterday; they’d been jumping up and looking out at the world a lot the day before. Must be quite a sight when you’ve only ever seen the inside of wooden box.

Maybe we’ll try and get some film up tomorrow. There was a plan to post a bit the other day, but, er, technical difficulties resulted in everything we’ve ever recorded on the recorder’s hard drive disappearing