Its been all go in Box 2 today. We switched on at 08:13 this morning and after several beaks appearing at the entrance, the first bird entered at 08:25.
One of the problems of writing this diary is that at first all bluetits look the same! However, our luck might be in this time as the first bird to enter did not have a complete white band around the back of its neck. This can be seen quite clearly on the image alongside. We cannot remember seeing a bird like this before.
At about 10 past 9 we had two birds in the box together. The
traditional view would be that these were the male and female birds of a
pair with the male introducing his partner to the nest site he had chosen
for her. We are not so sure. If this were the case we would
expect to be able to observe different behaviour between the two birds and
this we cannot see at this stage.
The bird at the top was the first one in and the newcomer is the bird at the bottom. This has a more normal narrow white band round its neck.
A couple of seconds later, they still seem to be assessing the situation. Neither looks particularly defensive - perhaps this is a couple.
The top bird - the male? - left shortly after leaving the female(?) in the box.
This shot and the next have reminded us of what one of last year's birds
looked like at this stage in the season. Fluffy, we called her that
for obvious reasons, started with us in February and all you could see of
her fluffiness was a small rough patch on her side in an identical position
to this bird.
If you want to see our first shots of Fluffy click here.
You can Fluffy as she looked a few weeks later here.
Another possibility is that the condition is genetic and this is one of Fluffy's chicks!
We have already seen this bird outside the nest taking some of the mealworms we put out for the robins and have wondered if this could be Fluffy after her autumn moult. Certainly, the speed with which this bird took to the nest seems to indicate a basic familiarity with the nestbox.
For now, we shall call this bird Fluffy2 (Fluffy too?).