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

It’s later than we’ve had before, by a small margin. Last year they hatched on April 29, whilst in 2008 it was May 4. They’ve always managed to hatch whilst the recorder has been off before, but this year we recorded most of the day. So here’s some highlights.

We start off with one of the parents apparently eating the shell of a newly hatched chicks. Later one poor soul gets his head stuck in a shell for a good long while. This is seriously edited—he must have been left the shell on his head for a good eight minutes or so! There are four hatchings in here altogether, so it’s over 10 minutes of video.

The fritillaries are out and so are the comma butterflies

And there are great clumps of primroses

And this is what they finished up with:

So, as reported on Twitter, on Saturday 27th March we saw the first signs of nest building going on in the blue tit nestbox. And it was a blue tit doing the work—we have seen great tits in there earlier and the occasional squabble, but it seems to be the blue tits that have prevailed again. Last year the first nesting was a good bit earlier, on 16th March. But I’m not sure we can really blame the cold winter for this year’s late start as in 2008 it was 26th March.

Saturday was a gorgeous day. We went for our first kayak paddle of the year on the Avon. It was pleasantly warm, and after the rain the previous week the river was full and flowing fast. Not anticipating the warmth I had far too many layers on to be working so hard to get upstream. What a contrast today! It was about 3°C when I got up this morning, and not much warmer when I had a site meeting around lunchtime. Looking at the nestcam now I can’t help wondering if the birds have decided they got it all wrong—they seem to have dragged half the nesting material out again! Let’s hope they return and bring up another brood in the Blue Tit Big Brother House

I made marmalade today—a rewarding but messy business that consequently involves a lot of time standing at the kitchen sink washing things up. The window by the kitchen sink looks out across the patio, where we have a ground feeder and various other things to attract birds.

The cold weather seems to have brought in a new visitor to our garden. A fieldfare, or so I’m told by people who know more about birds than I do (ie Sophie). And it’s a right bully.

It seems to have taken a liking to the apples that we put out for the blackbirds. It’s a fat looking thing, and you can tell why. All afternoon he’s done nothing but eat and fight off other birds. Sparrows, robins, blackbirds, starlings, none of them can get a look in. The ground feeder currently has several apples on it and large handfuls of suet and assorted seed. The fieldfare seems interested only in the apples, but he’s not letting anything else get close enough to eat the other stuff.

What do we do? Of course, the fieldfare is welcome to come and eat, but it seems determined to stop any of the regular visitors from eating at just the time when they most need to. Should we let nature take it’s course, or should we intervene somehow?

This little beastie was on the water mint in the pond the other day. And this evening Sophie went out to get some chives for supper and spotted a tiny little blue butterfly.

Which moved on later to the green house, giving us a glimpse of the top side of the wings

If anyone can tell us what they are I’d love to know.