Bird Box Reshuffle

Tuesday was the better of the last two days with much more sunshine than Monday which was a pretty dull day. Daytime temperature were around average for the time of year but early morning temperatures fell to around or below freezing on both days.

I’d been planning to move our bird boxes around for some time and as it was such a nice afternoon the ladders came out. I've usually cleaned out our nest boxes earlier in the year but it has been left a little bit late this year. 

For the last couple of years our nest boxes without cameras have been used by blue tits or great tits to raise a family but so far no one has taken a liking to our bird box with a camera linked up. You can see the camera lead trailing out of the box in the first photo. We’d decided that maybe the birds preferred the other two boxes as they were in easier hopping distance from the  branches of our magnolia tree. So besides removing last year’s nests from our sparrow terrace boxes the plan was to swap locations of a sparrow terrace and camera box as the last photo shows. I didn't bother looking inside the camera box to see if it needed cleaning out as we’d checked several times through winter to see if anything was roosting in the box. It wasn't.

I decided to check out if our camera was working. I had a few computer issues as the software that captures any movement on the camera had been deleted from our laptop. Fortunately I found the downloaded file of the software and reinstalled it. Up popped a picture of the inside of the box. I was a little bit dismayed as it looked like it needed a bit of a clean out and I’d only just fixed it into position. I was annoyed I hadn't thought of cleaning it out.

Then this happened.

I thought at first I was looking at some old images but the date confirmed that it was indeed Tuesday 10 March 2015 at 17:54. What looked like a great tit was having a look around inside. I was a little worried that my pictures weren't in colour but then realised that it was getting dark outside and the images would switch from colour to black and white. We watched for a while as the bird inspected the bottom of the nest box. What would it make of the “rubbish” inside.

At times our lone bird was joined by its partner and the two birds inspected the nest box together. Might we be in luck this year? As the light faded altogether one of the birds left the nest whilst one remained on guard so to speak and settled down to roost for the night. 

Now we’re hoping that the pair will take a liking to a detached nesting box just a hop away from a mature magnolia tree in a highly desirable location with plenty of excellent takeaways around.

Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett