Nesting season 2001
Broad Street, Guildford, UK.
Page eleven.
5th June 2001. It is a fine day today, and it is the nineteenth day since the first eggs hatched (five of them) so we are half-expecting fledging to take place. The male bird brings the first caterpillar at 04:55 (yes, the humans are doing without sleep too). In the following half hour he manages between 20 and 30 feeding trips. During this long day the birds become progressively bolder, looking out of the nest box hole, and even leaning out with more than half their body length on the outside. Here is a picture of a timid peep, early in the day.
Peering out, early.
Calling for food.
There are nine birds behind the one at the entrance, all jockeying for position and flapping their wings (as a flight trial). They form pyramids in the box and knock each other off the prime site at the entrance hole. Here is a bird looking definitely hungry. Our male survivor of the parental pair has his work cut out to satisfy their appetites. Feeding goes on relentlessly from 5am to 9pm.
Hungry fledgling.
The male sits on the wire, waiting for the camera-toting human to relent and go indoors so that he can bring food.
Male on wire
The fledglings get progressively bolder, and one almost manages to make it out of the box. The humans dare not leave the spectacle in case they all decide to fly away, suddenly. However, as noon approaches it becomes increasingly likely that they will wait unti the following day.
Another bird makes the nest hole and looks out in a startled manner.
"Gosh"
6th June 2001. Today is overcast. The male starts his feeding routine at 5am, as on the day before. Activity in the nest box is frenetic; the birds are fluttering up and down, and making a great chirping and squawking noise. Several times the first and most active bird almost makes it outside. We are reminded of a few visits to Athens airport. It is heaving, no place to sit down, dirty, noisy, and there are interminable flight delays. (It may be better now, ed.)
Almost out.
The male makes little circular flights from his staging post on the wire, to encourage the birds to fly.
Staging post.
At 07:12 BST, the first bird takes the plunge and flys away unsteadily, into the trees next door, from where the parents have gathered most of the food. By 07:42, the last bird has left. Once the hold-up ceases and the first bird goes, the others follow its lead with no further feeding or encouragement. This is quite unlike the process we observed last year.
As the mother is no longer, there have been no domestic services for the last four days. Left behind is an empty nest, with compacted vegetable matter and a large amount of droppings. It appears that the job of the mother is to keep the nest materials from compacting into the bottom of the box, as well as mucking out the excess droppings, which did not get removed from the birds' bottoms by the parents in the course of a feeding event. There are a number of residual insects patrolling the remains.
The deserted nest-box 1
The quiet is deafening, after the cacophony of the last few days. For comfort, we go and look in nest box 2, where the 5 youngsters still have a week or so to go before fledging.
The birds in box 2 are a week behind
The upshot is that we have put nine new blue tits into the wild, at the cost of one mother. Our birds this year have been exemplary parents, and given a lesson in "how it should be done".
You notice that the youngsters haven't got the adult colours of blue, yellow, and white. This is because they are territorial birds and a different colouration means that the adults will not drive them from the feeding grounds when they hare learning to hunt for themselves. After their first moult they will adopt adult colours.
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There are many pictures of the kind of activity we have seen, on the pages from earlier years. Please see the links on the page "Old birdsite" below.
Old birdsite http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/D.Jefferies/bird/birdsite.html
Lifeforms pictures http://www.eryptick.net/lifeforms.htm
Email dj@eryptick.net
diary continues......