We
start with Donna landing on the entrance to Box1. How do we know it's
Donna I hear you say!
In
she goes.
As
you can see - this is a female bluetit. But is it Donna?
After
about 20 seconds she seems to stop and look apprehensively towards the
entrance. At the moment, the outside camera does not show anything so
I presume she must have heard something.
Suddenly,
another bluetit appears and lands on the entrance. This must also be a
female as you can see quite a large lump of moss in her beak.
Whoever
she is, she is clearly not welcomed by the female inside.Is Mick stringing along two females or has the box ownership still not been settled?
This
bluetit spends the next 20 seconds or so hesitating about what to do.
Eventually, she throws her nesting material away (you can just make out the
moss flying away to the right as she throws it!) ...
... and in spite of the protestations from the bluetit inside ...
... she goes into the box.
Now,
all hell breaks loose and it's more or less impossible to see what is
happening.However, it is at least clear that these birds are fighting!
This
and the following pictures are the entire sequence that was captured.
!
Go
on Donna!
I
think she's winning!
Out
goes the loser ...
... whilst Donna recovers inside.(You can rest assured that whoever won, her name is Donna!)
While
Donna catches her breath, you can see the feathers torn off the participants
floating gently to the floor of the box. (For example, there is one
still floating down just near Donna's right cheek.)
Donna
leaves the box about a minute later. Here you can see that there is
now quite a large number of feathers on the floor of the box. Still,
they will help to make the nest a cosy one!