Nest building continues: mainly grass now

Lots of rain this afternoon but nest building continues. While the female brings in the material, the male is usually near the nest box jumping around nervously. In the morning it was still mainly moss that was brought in but this afternoon that changed to grass.

In the video below it is funny to see how wet the male is from the pouring rain. Look at his crest! While he goes in to check the nest he gets almost overrun by the female who is very busy building the nest! I have seen this several times today.

23 April 2012 2:05pm

…and here the same thing happens again. But now she literally jumps on top of him!

23 April 2012 1:33pm

…and here the last bit of nest building action of the day:

23 April 2012 4:59pm

Building the baby-room :)

The male is checking the progress of the nest while the female flies in with more building material. The male is contributing absolutely nothing to the building effort (this is normal I guess).

22 April 2012 8:09am

Regarding the progress of the nest, this is what it looks like as I write this. The female has dug a nice hole in the moss, but I think the bottom still needs some lining.

22 April 2012 1:00pm

Frantic nest building going on now!

This morning there was a lot of nest building activity. In some periods the female blue tit was flying in with material about every 30 seconds! Mainly moss, but I’ve also seen her bringing in grass, hair and other fluffy stuff.

This video was recorded early in the morning

22 April 2012 6:39am

At the same time I could see the male jumping around the nestbox, making himself look impressive by broadening his wings. He's also singing most of the time. Every now and then he peeked into the nestbox to see how things were progressing and sometimes he jumped in himself. The female is doing all the hard work though…
 
Another interesting thing can be seen in the video below. The female is building the nest and calls in the male. He enters the box but is hanging in front of the entrance most of the time. Although you can only see his tail and part of his wings, you can clearly see that he is making himself look impressive. But I think the pose of the female is especially interesting. She is spreading her wings slightly and fanning her tail. I’m not sure what it means but it reminds me of what I have seen (and recorded) earlier from female great tits and blue tits at (potential) nest sites. Probably some display or bonding ritual?

22 April 2012 9:44am

Finally: GAME ON!

Just when I was NOT running the camera for a few hours late this afternoon, apparently THIS has happened!

This moss was apparently brought in late this afternoon, 21 April 2012 

Looks like a serious attempt to start a nest here! I really regret that I didn’t capture it on video but I’m very happy to see it because I was already starting to get bit worried, since not much activity happened lately…

Still unclear which bird it is, but I should find out soon enough.

Not much activity….

The last few days have been worryingly quiet in the birdbox with almost no visits, except Jerommeke peeking through the entrance from the outside several times per day and one bird (the same?) spending the night there. But unfortunately no sign of nestbuilding. It looks like the bird claiming the box is a bachelor!

Today however, I captured one visit of two birds of which one was bringing in a white feather and some pieces of grass. But even if they follow through with it I fear that Jerommeke will expel them from “his” birdbox, like I have seen happening before.

Bringing in a white feather, 19 April 2012 2:26pm

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.

Who gets the box? Still undecided

Although the much stronger great tits showed great interest in the bird box yesterday, there are still regular visits of blue tits. This couple visited a few times this morning.

Blue tit couple visiting 10 April 6:55am

Female doing her thing, 10 April 9:58am

This is possibly the same couple that was chased away by another blue tit yesterday. I still see him singing and displaying in the area and he regularly peeks into the opening of the box. Perhaps this couple sneaked in when he was not around.

From now on I will call this strong territorial bird “Jerommeke”, naming him after the strong guy from the Belgian comic book “Suske en Wiske” (known in Britain as “Spike and Suzy”). That is easier than all the time referring to "the bird that blah blah blah....".

He is quite easy to recognise by a distinctive marking on the left side of his head: the blue from his crown extends at one point to his black eye line. It seems to me that Jerommeke has not found a female yet bcause he is usually alone when I see him.

"Jerommeke" with distinctive head marking, 7 April 2012

However, although he chased off another blue tit, he in turn is challenged by this great tit lady that visited the box again a couple of times this morning. She is part of a couple but I have never seen the male entering the box. He just peeks inside when she calls him.

Female great tit visiting, 10 April 2012 7:08am