Great tits have moved in!

When we returned from our holiday we were really excited to notice that a pair of great tits had moved into one of our nesting boxes. The boys made 3 nesting boxes and they have been up for 3 years now without being used. We did have some birds investigating one last year but to no avail. So as you can imagine it is thrilling to finally have some residents in one of the boxes!

I thought i'd spotted some birds going into the nest box with twigs in their mouth before we went away but they must have built it quickly and laid their eggs and been incubating them as we could hear baby birds cheeping on the Sunday we got home. Great tits normally lay between 7 - 15 eggs! and the female incubates them for 13-14 days. This is what they look like

 It's been amazing watching the parents go in and out, in and out of the nest box constantly with caterpillars for the baby birds. The cheeping got very loud when one of the parents entered the nest box. Here's one of them about to pop in and then with just the tail sticking out! What good parents they've been.

Here the bird has just come out of the box.

I found this great website about great tits nesting. I would have loved to have a peep in the box but didn't want to disturb them so here are a few images from the site of what may have been in there:

Look at this little fellow - how cute.

We watched these videos about:

nest building

Chicks hatching

Chicks fledging

I think our chicks have fledged this weekend. They have chosen a glorious weekend as the weather has been lovely and sunny here and we have been out lots so have missed seeing them; but I did catch sight of one young looking tit hanging onto one of the apple tree stakes looking round as though it was trying to work out what to do next! What a task - to jump out of the box and hope you can fly!

 I wonder how many there were and how they are getting on? I guess I will never know.

Amy's painting

Post script 8th June
Had a peep in the nest box while the ladders were out at the weekend and here is what we saw

What a beautifully constructed nest - so intricate and soft for the baby birds to be born in. AMAZING.

We will clean it out when we are sure they are not going to have another brood.