Here we are in the middle of April already….. and the birds are all in to the swing of nesting. The jackdaws in the bridle path nest box have been building for a month now and are concentrating on collecting soft materials to line the fortress of twigs they have collected. Despite my attempts to keep the camera clear of twigs, the nest is pretty impressive. I have removed a few twigs from the very front of the camera so we can see the nest and they seem happy with that as they have not added any more over the last few days. They have completely emptied my nesting dispensers of Bryn’s fur and sheep wool and the nest is looking very comfy! Over the last few days, they have mated on a number of occasions in the box so I am hoping that the female is getting close to laying now.
This cam live streams on my website, along with the other nests, so take a look to see what is happening.
Here are a couple of recent clips:
The great tit in the lane box has been staying over night for nearly a week now and that is usually an indication that they have started laying… one egg a day. She is covering the eggs up very well with huge amounts of Bryn’s fur from my dispensers so it is very hard to see how many eggs she has, but I think it is about 6 now. Sometimes you get a glimpse when she gets up first thing in the morning. The male came in yesterday with a big caterpillar for her, but she was not there. This is another indication that incubation is near… as soon as the female stays on the nest, the male will feed her. Incubation is then about 14 days.
Don’t forget, each of my nest boxes have their own page on my website and I try to regularly update them with images and videos. You can access each from the front page of my site.
The jackdaws are VERY active in the garden and are looking in the Pear Tree tawny box and have bought in a few twigs and also the Studio nest box. The Studio box already has a soft bed of materials from when the squirrels were in there and I have one pair visiting regularly, with small amounts of soft material. I am hoping they choose to stay very soon.
No more action in my hand-made Lane nest box. The blue tits seem to have chosen a small birch log box I put up for coal tits. I do not have a cam in this one (of course!) The side box has not had any more visitors either, sadly.
Looks like we may well have to settle for a couple of jackdaw and a great tit this season.