SlodgerBlog

Well, it has taken me a long time to get around to writing another post to my blog but I just had to write something about the ongoing story of our new birdbox.

I bought one of Nature Cameras’ cedar birdboxes with built-in colour wireless camera and installed it late last year on the fence at the bottom of our garden.

The setup was relatively simple but the supplied monitoring software was geared towards security camera use and lacked some of the webcam features I was looking for. In the end I plumped for Active Webcam which provides everything I wanted.

The camera automatically provides its own illumination in low light conditions via an array of infra-red LEDs allowing the interior of the birdbox to be viewed at all times of the day or night. In fact, as the box is designed for Bluetits which require a very small entrance hole (1.25″), the infra-red illumination is required pretty much the whole time. Unfortunately this renders the colour capability of the camera virtually redundant as only a monochrome image is possible under infra-red light.

After installing the wireless receiver I configured the software to record a short video if it detects any motion so we wouldn’t miss anything. We avidly checked for activity over the winter months but there were no visitors, then on 6th April we found this video, we had a house-hunter!

Over the following weeks we saw lots of visits to the box, including some where two birds visited at the same time - definitely interested in the new des-res.

Then, on 3rd April one of the birds roosted in the box overnight, bringing in some feathers as well - could this be the beginning of nesting? The feathers disappeared the next day but the frequency of visits increased dramatically until on 9th April significant quantities of moss started to appear.

Nest building continued for the rest of April until an astonishing amount of material had been brought into the box and the nest started to take shape.

Then on 1st May the much anticipated event took place, the first egg was laid! There was much rejoicing in our family and I’m sure Mr and Mrs Bluetit were pretty chuffed too. Not only that but Mrs Bluetit laid a further egg every day for a week!

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

We now have a beautiful nest containing seven tiny eggs and a very dedicated mother sitting on them almost around the clock. Her hubby delivers a caterpillar or worm every so often but sometimes she leaves the nest to sit on a nearby branch - obviously wanting to stretch her wings and get a breath of fresh air. Whenever she does this, hubby quickly arrives with food and feeds her there, she then immediately returns to the nest!

We are now awaiting the first hatching which should take place in about a week’s time. Watch this space…