A Little More from Nestcam

A brief visit from a (the same?) Blue Tit this morning. He or she was in and out pretty quickly - but spent a while around the entrance hole.

Looking at last year's dates, the first recorded visit (Great Tit) was at the beginning of April (although my motion detection settings weren't sensitive enough so I could have missed many visits) with the first of the nesting material brought into the box late in the day on April 13th - so we have a long wait yet...

Goldfinch

The garden is very busy with the usual suspects: 40+ Goldfinch, 40+ Chaffinch and a handful of Greenfinch (possible low numbers due to Trichomoniasis). The Blackbirds are still around, but in much smaller numbers than the 20-or-so we were getting during the hard frosts.

The lights in the bird box are now fixed, though no one has been inside since the initial visit on 18th February. It's still early days, though - and the weather is abysmal which doesn't seem to help.

I'll start collecting some nesting material this weekend - so if we don't get any occupants, I might at least get the chance to take some photos of birds collecting for their nests.

Goldfinch





Chaffinch

Nestcam 2008

We had the first recorded visit to the nest box today - a Blue Tit!

The lights in the box aren't working at the moment - not that they seem to make much difference anyway - but we'll get them sorted at the weekend. We bought the stuff needed yesterday - it's just a quick soldering job.

So, just before 11am a Blue Tit arrived and had a quick look around the gaff.

Last year we had Great Tits nesting - wonder who'll take up residence this year? Fingers crossed someone does!

Bramblings Return

This was the first time I've recorded a Brambling in the garden since we moved here in 2005 - but this time we had two instead of just one! No chance of an even slightly decent photo, though, as it was just too dull. I almost didn't bother...

Both birds were picking at the wind-spilt seed.

The male


The female


We've got quite large numbers of Chaffinch, Goldfinch and Siskin at the moment - and when they all arrive together it's a job-and-a-half trying to count them all!