Last year's birds
Fluff roosts
Fluff is usurped
A truly excellent site about these birds
4th March 2000. The birds are regular visitors. Some pictures of the last two days' activities may be seen by downloading from the directory index to pics000304 . The male has enticed the female into the box, and she has been responding by giving him a courtship display.
5th March 2000. Both birds have been in the box together. Perhaps they have been mating. We are not sure, being novices in this kind of bird watching. For spectacular pictures, click on the filenames in pics000305 .
11th March 2000. A pair of birds has been visiting repeatedly over the last few days. The male has difficulty in squeezing out of the hole. Inspection of the front of the box shows the following bird damage to the surround, where the male has been trying to enlarge the hole by pecking.
Accordingly we have replaced the entrance hole with one a few mm larger in diameter. We await developments.
The birds have rapidly taken to the new entrance. They spend more time entering and leaving and exploring, and are no longer hammering at the wood with their beaks.
12th March 2000. We have rigged up a second camera, pointing at the outside of the box via a mirror, and can observe the behaviour outside the box as well as inside. The male visits first, looking in the box to see if there are any interlopers, then perching on the top of the box and the wires, calling for his mate and flapping his wings. Occasionally the female arrives; the male enters the box to show that it is safe so to do, and then leaves and eggs on the female to enter. When she does so, she sits very quietly while he looks in at her. She seems to be encouraging the male to enter also.
On one occasion a ferocious starling beak appeared in the hole.
Here is a sequence of pictures.
First, the female looks out of the nestbox at the
male perched on top.
Second, the male looks in.
Third, from inside, the female waits quietly while the male peers in.
Fourth, the male has flown and the female emerges.
Fifth, the female does a little dance of joy on the top of the box, before climbing up the adjacent wire and out of the top of the picture.
No more sightings of the errant starling.
To hear bird sounds, load the 366kB file tweet.html and wait a bit. Recorded this afternoon, 12th March 2000, at a range of under 1 metre.
14th March 2000. There appear to be at least two pairs of birds.....
email d.jefferies@surrey.ac.uk David Jefferies 26th March 2000