Does any bird spend the night in my bird box?

16 December 2011

All this time I was wondering why none of the birds was spending the night in the box. After all, it was well below freezing recently. Well, today I got my answer.

Early this morning (it was still dark) I switched on the camera and noticed new bird poop in the box, but no bird in sight. Assuming that the bird will not fly in and out in the dark, that would mean that there is a bird in the box, but outside the view of the camera. This is possible because the camera is aimed at the floor and I cannot see the opening. So could it be that a bird flies in undetected and roosts somewhere above the camera, perhaps even sitting on top of the camera (there is not much space but who knows?).

So I kept the camera running and just before sunrise the motion detection triggered a recording that reveals the tail of a bird that is apparently perched at a position outside the range of the camera.

Sometime later I catch the following video. It appears this great tit is not entering the box but jumping down from the position inside the box where earlier the tail of the bird could be seen. This seems to confirm that the great tit has indeed spent the night in the box.

Another interesting thing in this video is that the great tit does some housekeeping, throwing poop out of the box.