Diary entry modified 26th September 2008

Firstly welcome back to all our visitors (and thank you for coming back!) It seems like ages since we updated this diary and website, but June & July are always quiet months.

We hoped that the House Sparrows would use box 2 in July but sadly they did not return and it remained empty and unused.

At the end of August we cleaned out both our boxes, removed all the moss etc and used hot water to kill any bugs. In box 1 the nest was removed and we found that four chicks had sadly died, in total, when the female Blue Tit was lost to a Sparrowhawk. We are not going to include any photos of the nesting material being removed as the photo/sight was not very pleasent to look at. We have now included some photos of the boxes being scrubbed out and what they looked like afterwards.

Picture 1: Once all the moss and dead chicks had been removed (box 1) a lot of fine dust was left. Carefully, wearing a dust mask, the box was dusted out with a paint brush		Picture 2: The box (1) floor now clean of the fine dust.
Picture 3: Once all the fine dust was removed the box was washed out with hot soappy water to kill any bugs etc		Picture 4: After allowing the box to air and dry the front is put back on, ready for any new tenant
Picture 5: Box 2 was not used for a nest this year, however the male Blue Tit used this box to roost in. Over the months many spiders had made their home in the box. The feathers are from the male		Picture 6: Box 2 was again brushed out and cleaned like box 1
Picture 7: Box 2 clean and ready for any new tenant

On 24th August the male "Bluey" was seen checking the entrance hole to box 1. He made no entries inside but we could hear another Blue Tit close by. It is amazing to think that he has remembered where the box is after all these months and is still interested in it.

So far we have not seen any roosters using our boxes, but visits have been made during the daytime.

We have recently purchase a new wireless camera and will be hopefully installing it into box 1 soon. This camera is better than our current one and also works in the dark, using infrared. We will update our technical pages soon. The outside camera, for box 1, is also suffering with a fault. The camera is struggling to show a picture sometimes. The plan is to swap out this camera before it fails.

More in our next update. Until 2009 we will be only updating our diary pages weekly, normally each Sunday evening.