Day 4 nest building

The nest definitely getting much more of a structure now, still its of moss and grass being brought in. Quite a bit of finer, hair-like, material being brought in which is clearly holding things together. Most of the building effort appearing to be done by getting in the nest cup and pushing outwards. Perhaps this bird won’t do the jumping up and down bit.

All of the wool we collected in the fields has been taken by other birds. Off to get some more!

Day 3 of nest building and it’s getting very full

Starting to worry that this bird is being too successful at gathering materials – maybe making such an easy supply was a bad idea? There is a lot of material going up towards the hole on the left of the picture and the nest cup is starting to become more obvious. In to 2017 there was quite a lot of jumping up and down on the nest as it neared completion so maybe that will happen…

If this carries on she’ll be banging her head on the camera.

48 hours after taking over

Things moving on very fast. A number of large pieces that look like bits of wood (could be planed off the end of fence panels as one of the neighbours has been repairing his fence). Hoping that it’s not got any nasty chemicals in it. It looks odd but I suspect it will end up giving the nest a bit more structure when it’s covered up.

Planning to collect some wool from field boundaries on our next walks as the nest looking pretty full.

A New Bird in the Box

A few hours later this bird enters the nest box. It has spent some time on the outside of the box pecking around the hole before finally coming in. This bird has a distinctly different cap with a very wide gap on the back right of its cap and a far less pointed front.

We are pretty sure that this is a more dominant male that has evicted the previous hen so he can move his own mate in. It (he) doesn’t do any of the typical chest rubbing or nest cup wriggling behaviour.

Defending the box

With all the nesting material pushed behind her and her tail spread she tries to make herself look bigger to put off the blue tit on the outside of the box looking in through the hole. This carries on for about 20 minutes before she eventually leaves.

For reference have a look at her cap. It’s got a pale pointed area at the front and looks like it almost joins to the dark ring around her neck on one side at the back. This is how we differentiate the birds that visit and how we know that this is the last we see of this hen.