Blue Tit pair in Nestbox again

We have had a female Blue Tit roosting in our Camera Nestbox for a couple of months now. Occasionally she has been seen visiting the box during the day – well I am assuming it is the same bird anyway. She has also been heard calling from the entrance – I guess to her mate. Yesterday we saw a blue tit pecking at the entrance once again just as they did last year when our Nestbox was discovered. How interesting to see this activity again although I am surprised they are doing this now.

This morning as I worked on the post above I heard noises through the speaker and turned the volume up to hear the female calling again. Today however I was lucky and managed to capture video of them both in the box once again. I really need to see the male before he goes in to be sure it is the same pair as the male is still seen visiting my garden so it could easily be him.



As you can see above the clips are short and as they were taken in the morning the light isn’t as good and the video is in black and white. However they do capture the activity nicely as they pop in and out which they did a number of times even taking some of the wood shavings out with them too! I guess the next thing I will need to look out for is the male roosting in our Nestbox too! I have to say I am looking forward to sharing this activity for another year although it is possible the birds will roost in our box and nest in another – perhaps even in our Terrace Nestbox which has no camera. Ah well we will just have to wait and see.

The video shown above was taken from my Camera Nestbox on January 6th 2008.

Still roosting

We have a Camera Nestbox in our garden, put up March 2007, and have been delighted to see a Blue Tit roosting in it after we cleaned it out and put some wood shavings on the floor. We had no idea of this bird or others would continue to use our box. I am delighted to report that a month on it is still being used. I cannot be certain that it is the same bird but I am guessing that it is. I am also guessing it is the female who used this box in Spring this year.

Tucked up for the night at 6pm tonight, you can see below, is our Blue Tit rooster. However, we did have a concern that our box was leaking two weeks ago. You can see the wet walls in the second photo below but it does appear to have dried up since then as the photo above shows. Perhaps the rain came in the entrance hole at a different angle and that was the cause. We will keep an eye on this the next time we have heavy rain. I don’t believe our Nestbox has had snow on its roof either so we will need to watch for that too. Perhaps we should brush any snow off from the window above. If the holes in the roof are covered we will not be able to see in it anyway to check on it.

Dark, wet evenings of late have meant that I have been unable to catch any video footage of our Blue Tit rooster in our Nestbox when it comes in as it is only lit by natural light. However, back in the middle of November we were very surprised to see a Blue Tit in our Nestbox one sunny lunchtime! Again, I’ve no way of telling if it is the same bird but I can tell that I perhaps I put too much wood shavings in the Nestbox!



The photos above were taken from our Camera Nestbox on December 2nd (with rooster) and November 20th (with wet walls). The video above was taken from out Camera Nestbox on November 16th 2007.

‘It worked!’ cont

Every now and again I mail a column in a local newspaper, The Courier, to share current stories of what’s happening in my garden. My garden is not unique and I know many of its readers are likely to have the same activity in their gardens. I would like to welcome these readers to my garden diary/blog. You will find my post mentioned in the ‘Craigie’ column today here . I hope you enjoy your visit and are enjoying your gardens and visiting wildlife too.

The photo above was taken in my Camera Nestbox on November 5th, 2007. I wonder if the Blue Tit was waiting for the fireworks to start!

Tucked in for the night

This is a just a short post just to say that we still have our Blue Tit roosting in our Camera Nestbox. I missed it come in tonight but we checked our Nestbox via torchlight at 7pm and captured the photo below. As the photo shows more clearly the head tucked in I thought I would share it. Note our Blue Tit is trying and different corner tonight!

It worked!

Three weeks ago today we took down our Camera Nestbox, cleaned it and scattered some wood shavings on the floor. We were hoping that we might get birds roosting in our box over the cold nights ahead. Let’s hope our camera survives the cold temps in our area of Scotland as tonight our Nestbox actually has a Blue Tit roosting in it!

The photo above was taken at 10.45pm tonight - briefly lit by torchlight! The temp gauge in the car read 6 deg C.

You can read all about how we prepared our Nestbox for roosters here . This is our second year to have a Nestbox in the garden over winter and this is the first winter for our Camera Nestbox.

Tap, tap, tap came through the PC speakers tonight at 4.40pm. It was my daughter, who had just switched on the PC, who heard it. Fortunately she remembered hearing this through the Camera Nestbox earlier this year and looked in on it to see a bird in the box! She quickly hit the record button and captured the clip you can see below. How lovely to see a bird in our Nestbox once more – I wonder if it is one of our nesting pair that used it earlier this year.



We both watched the screen to see the Blue Tit move around one of the corners in the Nestbox. It was getting darker and the light inside the box was fading – our box is only lit by natural daylight.

The first set of photos, shown below, was how our nestbox looked to us with the Blue Tit moving a piece of wood shaving in its beak and finally getting comfortable in the corner where it tucked in its head ready to sleep over in our Nestbox. How great to see this activity again. If you are considering cleaning your nestbox this is the the advice that the RSPB give on doing it.

In the second set of photos I altered the light contrasts so you could see it more clearly. The Blue Tit has been moving about since these photos were taken and appears to have also used the box as a toilet too - although I will need daylight to confirm this! That didn't happen with sleep overs in the Spring.


I did say above that this was the second year we have had a Nestbox over winter. Last year we had a Terrace Nestbox - designed especially for House Sparrows as they are happy to nest in communities. However in Spring 2006 it was a Blue Tit that made nests and had young from it. Unfortunately that box suffered water damage and we replaced it this Spring with another of the same kind.

It is very doubtful that the Terrace Nestbox had any Roosters last winter. However the replacement was occupied this year – but we weren’t happy at all with these residents - wasps! As this Nestbox is sited on the wall above our back door we had to destroy the nest which you can see in the photo below.


Three weeks ago we also cleaned out this Nestbox but it took a few days dry out and now has wood shavings in it too. I wonder if we might get roosters in this Nestbox – no camera there though!

Last November I also put up three roosting pockets on the ivy clad trellis of my pergola. I have no idea if they were used but I have to say I have been noticing small birds passing through this area recently and one day I did spot a tiny wren!

I did set up my video camera, outside on my tripod, but didn’t catch any activity at the pockets. However I also spotted two wrens together on the branches of my small Acer at my back door so I wonder if they will spend the winter in my garden somewhere. I will keep an eye out for them.

All Camera Nestbox photos shown above were taken in my garden on October 29th 2007.

Ready for roosters

Yesterday we finally found the time to take down our Camera Nestbox and give it all a good clean in preparation for any birds that may want to roost in it over the cold autumn and winter nights ahead. It is important that any Nestbox is cleaned after it has been used as it can harbour fleas and other parasites. Autumn is a good time to do this.

You may find unhatched eggs in a nest and it is actually illegal to remove these from the end of January to the beginning of August. As we had a camera in our Nestbox we knew what to expect when we opened it. We had eight eggs hatch in May but sadly no chicks survived despite the efforts of the parents to find food. Our Nestbox was by no means the only unsuccessful pair of Blue Tits this year as I found out through forums, comments and email. We were very privileged indeed to see any activity at all in our Camera Nestbox especially when it was only up two days when we had our first visitors.

If you were considering putting up a Nestbox with or without a camera I think the 2 minute video clip below would perhaps tempt you. It has not been edited in any way except to add the text. If you turn up your speakers you will hear the female inside the box calling to the male. The light flickering is the male at the entrance hole. When he finally comes in he inspects the box more thoroughly - the female looked exhausted! He also checks out the camera too which was a bit worrying to watch at the time! You can see the whole story from our Camera Nestbox here .




To clean our Nestbox we carefully followed the instructions from the supplier of our Nestbox and only used boiling water to clean it after we scrapped out the remnants of the nest. The nest can be seen in the photos below. It took the female Blue Tit quite a time to build and we were beginning to think at one point that she was going to give up completely!


The main photo above shows the nest as we found it when we opened the front panels yesterday. You can see how the female Blue Tit layered it all. So many pieces of material came in the box and was taken out again. Maybe this was due to inexperience - perhaps this was her first nest!

The top photo on the right shows the last photo taken from the camera inside the box on Sept 30th. Our camera shows colour when there is good light and black and white on duller days.

The bottom photo on the right shows a photo from the camera in our box at 5pm yesterday after cleaning with it mounted back on the wall. The instruction sheet for cleaning also mentioned that the RSPB recommend adding a handful of clean hay or wood shavings for any roosting birds. We added wood shavings - but it was stressed that the wood shavings should not be treated with any preservative or insecticide.

I have to say this is the second year we have opened a Nestbox to see a nest but despite that still found it fascinating to see in particular when we watched the work that went into building it. Last year it was our Terrace Nestbox that we opened to find a nest for the first time. We opened that one yesterday too but we are still waiting for it to dry out before we put it up again – its design is quite different. I will post on the terrace at the weekend.


Having our Camera Nestbox open meant that we took the opportunity to give the camera lens and the inside roof a wipe clean too. You can see how the camera fits in our box in the photo above.

You can see where the connectors are in the photos above too. However, we added a ‘box cover’ for the connectors outside the box as we felt they would need protected from our Scottish weather! We have a wire running down our house wall (tucked behind a drainpipe) then it goes through our house wall and we have it connected to our PC. This Nestbox can also show images on a TV and you could just put the cable through a window to see all the action inside.

Infra red would allow us to see inside our box when it is dark although at present we do not have this. We have considered whether we would change this or not for next year – we are undecided on this. At the moment we see inside our box only by daylight through the holes in the roof. A clear piece of Perspex covers the holes. We have been very happy with the way our box has worked. If you were considering buying the same Camera Nestbox I should point out that the manufacturer of our box has changed the design for 2008.



Finally, I wanted to show our Camera Nestbox from the outside. The video above is one of my favourite clips taken from my video camera which I set up on a tripod in my garden.

I have absolutely no idea if our Camera Nestbox will get birds roosting in it in the months ahead as this is all completely new to us. However, we have made our Camera Nestbox ready for roosters and we will enjoy looking in on it to see if it gets used again. I also really hope that in sharing our Nestbox story that possibly more nestboxes might get put up in gardens, schools and places of work - that I would be thrilled about!