I can now say with certainty that the promise of our Nestbox pair of blue tits, which had a shaky start, is back on shaky ground yet again. The male is definitely out of the picture now and we have a female blue tit not only incubating her eggs and looking after her young chicks but she has to find food for both the chicks and herself now too.

At the moment the chicks aren’t able to eat too much but soon their appetites will increase greatly and I doubt she will be able to keep up with demand. The survival of her chicks is solely her responsibility now. I am trying to find a way to help her but the invasion of starlings and their chicks to my garden is making it difficult to know where to put food and believe me I am trying various methods!

This evening we did catch a glimpse of a blue tit at my pond looking for food. We initially thought it was the female until I looked in the Nestbox expecting to see her with the chicks and she wasn’t there! Now, I had to take a closer look at this blue tit who was drinking from the running water now. It was hard to tell if it was the male but if it was it was looking a little worse for wear!

Shortly after this the female left the Nestbox. I never saw where she flew to but I am told she joined this bird for a short while. Without seeing this I have no idea if she was chasing it away or flying with it. I wonder if she is looking for another mate now to help her out. We will just have to wait and see what tomorrow brings.

I have a few videos I hoped to show tonight but disappointingly they are still in the processing stage for adding tonight. However I didn’t want Day 2 of our chicks to pass without an update. The photo above taken at 9pm tonight shows that we now have six chicks hatched and two eggs left. I fully expect that the last two will probably hatch before I next look in around 7.30am tomorrow morning.

Every time I look in the Nestbox now I find myself trying to count the chicks. When you see the videos I have you will understand that is easier said than done. I look for their little banana shaped mouths and black eyes. At the moment their eyes are fully closed so they have to listen for the chirps from the female to know when to open their mouths for food. It is absolutely fascinating to watch all this activity.

Oh… I really hope I can count all eight chicks tomorrow morning. The weaker chicks struggle at this time. Fingers crossed yet again.

The photo above was taken in my camera Nestbox on May 27th 2008.