Nesting News

I was hoping to go out birding on Monday or Tuesday but a flashing brake warning light in the car and a pool of what looked like brake fluid on the drive necessitated a trip to the local Vauxhall dealers leading to 2 carless days and a rather expensive repair bill! I had the car back today but you might know the day was taken up with family commitments and I didn't have the time to fit in a birding trip - oh well there is always tomorrow!

I've spent a lot of time, therefore, garden birdwatching!

The pair of blue tits are still in and out of the nestbox and one of the birds is still taking in nest material and removing it again. Sorry, still no video. My son is having problems converting it from a disk to a format that blogger will accept. It is "doable" as he's done it before using a certain well known software editing package but its that long ago he's forgotten how he did it! Hopefully, he will have a flash of inspiration or remember so that when something more interesting happens in the nestbox I can put a video on the blog.

Not a lot of activity wrenwise since the nest was built in the ivy but she could be sitting on eggs.

A male robin has been courtship feeding the female and I suspect they have built a nest in one of the holly bushes.

I am not sure of the outcome of the blackbirds' nesting attempt. The young were due to fledge sometime this weekend but on Monday when my daughter was feeding the rabbit outside she heard the blackbirds' alarm calls accompanied by very agitated behaviour and she saw a magpie consuming a young blackbird on the lawn. So we are not sure if the magpies robbed the nest or if the birds had fledged and the magpie took one of the young after they had left the nest. There were still signs that the blackbirds were collecting food so I am hoping it was the latter and that some of the fledglings have survived.

There are plenty of speckled wood and holly blue butterflies in the garden but no chance of photographs as they never seem to alight anywhere for long.

I took a few photos of birds in the garden yesterday (all cropped images)

Wood Pigeon - I've decided I really quite like this species as its relatively easy to photograph being quite tame and as its large it fills the frame!



Dunnock or Hedge Sparrow



Male blackbird -



Male house sparrow