February 2007 Diary

15th February

Part 1 of 2

Firstly sorry to all our visitors, who tired to access the website yesterday evening. Due to a issue with our hosting provider we were offline from around 18:00 until 23:00. Our providers have informed us that all issues should now be resolved.

Yesterday saw the start of National Nest Box Week. Please click here for more information.

I had to de-ice the car this morning and whilst doing that I noticed that the enterance hole to Box 1 looked different. It appears that either a Blue Tit, or other bird, has peacked at the hole and some of the wood has come off. The hole was not like this on Monday so it must have happend on Tuesday, but the weather was wet until late evening. I will try to add a photo later.

Again today, we have left the cameras inside and outside box 1 on from 8am to 2pm. Will we get any visitors or will they go to box 2 instead? Readers of our last diary entry will know that we received no visits at all during the last recording.

Looking back through the 2006 season we saw the male visit over 25 times, around this time of the year. Will this year be a repeat?

We will update this diary later today.

Part 2 of 2 (finally!)

Sorry for taking so long to update this diary entry. It has taken a lot longer than we thought going through all the video etc. We have some great news plus some slightly bad news.

First the good news. We recorded 8 visits today and for the first time this year we had both the Male & Female visit box 1. The Male was first to arrive at around 09:15am. He then spent some time peaking at the enterance hole. Happy with the box he then entered (picture 2)

	Picture 1: The male arrives at the box	Picture 2: The male enters the box

He then stayed in the box, occasionally looking out. His partner, the female, arrived at the enterance hole. We can only imagine that the male was calling to her, as I selected the wrong camera and sadly recorded a blank screen instead of the inside of box 1. Still at least we got some photos! (that's the bad news over with!)

	Picture 3: The male looking out the hole	Picture 4: The female arrives

She entered the box in a matter of seconds. Is this bird our resident rooster. The bird that roosts is certainly not the male. So both in the box and sadly no picture :(

After a few seconds the male departs quickly. The female then spends some time checking the box out.

	Picture 5: The female enters the box	Picture 6: The male leaves the box

The male has been peaking at the hole and some flakes of wood have come off. The female then seems to remove them. Visits continued and the female seemed to like the box. Picture 7 shows the female looking out the box, with some bits of wood from the box. Picture 8 is of the female looking out of the box (looks unconfortable!) Picture 9 is her going back in again.

The female may well have done some nesting wiggles already. How I wish I had checked the output twice!

	Picture 7: The female cleans up the box	Picture 8: The female looks out the box
	Picture 9: The female goes back in	Picture 10: The male visits in the afternoon

The male was the last bird to visit, during daylight hours. Our resident rooster returned and used box 1, at around 17:10.

Below is a summary table of the visits:

So the visits added up to 26 minutes & 43 seconds. Five of the visits were by both the male & female and 4 visits inside the box were made by both birds.

We will monitor the boxes again on Friday from 8am to 2pm and hopefully over the weekend.

Heres hopping they nest and are successfull!