First attempt at nest building! but chased off…

I have just witnessed the first nest building attempt in the history of this bird box! A female blue tit flew in with a piece of moss.

Female brings moss into the box, 10 April 2012 11:31am

She then starts spreading it around with her wings (this is what the wing spreading/ shuffling reflex is all about I guess…). Unfortunately, it appears she is chased off by our male!

10 April 2012 11:31am

Interestingly, starting at 0:59 in the video you can see the same kind of displaying behaviour (spreading wings and fanning tail) that we also saw yesterday when the great tit female was visiting.