And other stories from the garden
Posted in NestCam on May 10th, 2009
The chicks are changing fast now. It’s hard to believe that only 11 days ago they looked like embryos! But, like last year, there’s another greedy so’n’so who thinks he can swallow a grub the size of his head without consequences.
We have chicks! Looks like six of the nine eggs in the Blue Tit Big Brother house have hatched so far, five days earlier than they did last year. The female (is it Karma?) is still sitting on them most of the time, which can’t be very comfortable for mum or chicks. They’re pretty ugly […]
Posted in NestCam on Mar 16th, 2009
Turning on the TV last night we saw the first signs of nesting material in the brother house nestbox. And a decidadely smaller bird fast asleep. When it rearranged itself a few minutes later it was clear that this was a blue tit, not the great tit which has been roosting all winter. This evening […]
Welcome back! The 2009 nesting season is almost upon us and things are looking interesting around the nest box. Over the winter a great tit has taken to roosting in the box most nights. We’ve been wondering what would happen come spring. Lately, a pair of blue tits have been hanging around quite a lot. […]
Posted in NestCam on May 23rd, 2008
All seven chicks have fledged! It happened quite suddenly this morning. One or two more adventurous chicks spent the early part of the morning fluttering up to the hole and looking out. After only seeing the inside walls of nesting box for their entire lives this must have been quite a revelation for them. Then […]
Posted in NestCam on May 10th, 2008
The weather’s been pretty hot over the last few days and the chicks appear to be suffering in the heat. They’re becoming more mobile and are crawling out of the crowded nest cup, presumably for coolness. Unfortunately the tree the box is in isn’t as heavily leafed as we thought it would be by the […]
Posted in NestCam on Apr 27th, 2008
Karma has now been sitting on her eight eggs for about a week, although the first few days she was a bit on and off. Even now she pops out quite regularly. We’re a bit surprised by this. We imagined she would sit continuously and be fed by Buzz, but it seems not. Buzz does […]
Posted in NestCam on Apr 13th, 2008
As expected, when we checked this morning there was a second egg in the nest. Imagine our horror then when we turned on the television this evening to find the eggs gone! Or were they? Closer inspection revealed that Karma had carefully hidden them using feathers. Not so much buried them, as camouflaged them. She’s […]
Well it’s definately the female in the nest! Thanks to Phil, and his comment on ‘Overnight Stay’, we realised that the roosting bird is Karma not Buzz and early this morning she produced egg number one. Apparently she will lay one a day until she decides there are enough and then she’ll start incubating them […]
Posted in NestCam on Apr 6th, 2008
The nest building has progressed really fast this week—it looks almost finished, with a lovely feather lining. We’ve been away for the weekend and hadn’t seen any of the weekend’s recordings, so were very excited to see one of the tits come in to the box to roost for the night at about 7.30pm! Looking […]