Great Tits - Mum Has Breakfast in Bed

Another egg last night - now we have five, there could be anything up to eight by the time she has finished laying. She hasn't finished yet as she has not started incubating them. Mum is obviously getting her mate trained as he was spotted bringing a tasty morsel for her breakfast.



She still leaves the nest from time to time which gives me an opportunity to see how many eggs there are. All five can be seen in this still clip.


I had a read up about nesting and incubation with the tit family. The eggs will not start to develop unless she is sitting on them day and night. Also when the time is right she loses some of her chest feathers which allows her body heat to be transferred to the eggs.

Now we are Four

It looks like one egg a day for the Great Tit in the nest box as the total has now reached four.



Snapshot from the video:

Friday at the Flicks - Great Tit Sitting on Eggs

Just a short video clip this morning as the electricity meter is being changed some time today and that will interrupt the supply for a while.  I had a feeling there was one egg in the Great Tit nest a couple of days ago but when she leaves the nest she covers everything up so well only the nest can be seen. Fortunately last night I was able to get a quick glimpse of two eggs as she leaned over to have a good scratch.



A snapshot from the video:



She doesn't appear to be incubating them as yet and often leaves the nest leaving the eggs well covered up. She does return from time to time to check that everything is all right. I assume incubation starts when they have all been laid and that leaving them cooler slows down the development so they all hatch at about the same time.

At tea time today I could see there are now three eggs in the nest box:

Bath Time for a Song Thrush

Looking through the captures from yesterday's session looking at the garden pond waterfall most are of Blackbirds, House Sparrows and Starlings. There is the odd Wood Pigeon, Blue Tit, Goldfinch, Tree Sparrow and Greenfinch. Best of all was to see a Song Thrush as I rarely hear one and even more rarely see one so it was great to know at least one visits for a wash and brush up.





The camera set up is shown below. Canon 350D with EF 70-200mm f1.4 lens on a tripod on the left of the photo. PIR (passive infra-red) detector on a tripod on the right near the green water barrels. It looks down on the waterfall. The PIR triggers a radio shutter control so there are no wires trailing between the sensor and the camera. The camera was set to a fixed 1/500 sec with manual focus and auto exposure.



Of course the supervisor had to get in on the act.

Bath Day

As we had got rid of most of the cold wind and the Sun was out I decided to set up the automatic system for taking photographs of any visitors to the garden pond waterfall. Even while I was setting up the camera at the opposite end of the pond several House Sparrows carried on bathing. By previous experience I hadn't expected much but by the end of the day there were well over 600 shots to examine.  About half were consigned to Dusty Bin and many of the rest are similar but I will have a sort through tomorrow. For now I will leave you with this one:

Macro on Monday - Guess What

While I was sat outside one sunny day a few weeks ago several flies landed on my arm. I brushed them off and thought little more about it. Later in the day a lump and bruise started to appear which I treated with hydrocortizone cream. The lump and bruise grew for several days and each time I touched it I could feel something which felt like a stiff hair. I didn't think much about it until one day when it was itching I gave it a scratch and pulled out last week's mystery object. The pointed end on the left is the business end and an opening in the side like the eye in a needle can be seen near the tip.



My own theory as to what it is: I assume at least one of the flies was a blookd sucker and I think that the process of knocking the fly off my arm broke its proboscis while it was still inside my arm. Once I had removed the offending object the healing process speeded up a lot.

On to more pleasant things for this week's puzzle. Guess what.



Clue: Think back to some very sticky sap.

Nest Building Obstacles