We've finally come to a decision about naming the pair of bluetits in box 1. We shall call the male Carlos which is an aristocratic version of Charles with a touch of Careless in it! The female, who is a pearl, we shall call Megan which is a variant of Margaret, Greek for pearl! A bit tortuous, but you have to have some reason for names!!
Our
story this morning starts with Carlos inside the box, perched on the exit
hole, "flashing his white cheeks", as described in British Tits,
to the world outside.
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Eventually,
he attracts his partner, Megan to come to the box's entrance..
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Carlos
immediately jumps down inside and awaits Megan's entrance.
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For
some reason, Megan does not want to enter the box and she stays on the
entrance hole looking around her.
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After
a while, Carlos gets fed up with this waiting game and decides he has had
enough. He therefore flies up to the hole and forces his way past
Megan and flies off.
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Of
course, Megan now decides that entering the box is what she wanted to do all
the time, but remembering what happened on an earlier occasion, wasn't sure
whether she would be doing the right thing by going in while Carlos was
still there!
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Once
she is inside, she again finds the mess that Carlos left when he roosted in
the box on the previous night. She appears to pick up some of his droppings
...
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...
and removes them.
This time, she doesn't start a shuttle service to clear up the box but disappears for quite a while. Carlos has been roosting in the box every night since the first time he spent the night there. We are concerned that a male roosting may put the female off the site as a nesting site. We haven't had this before - previous roosters have been female, and have left the box scrupulously clean. Only time will tell! |