Nest Building GT Style

Mrs Great Tit has been working exceptionally hard these past two days fetching material for her nest. I don't think it will be long before it is completed. This from this morning, several visits with the gaps removed but otherwise at normal speed:  (silent)

Nest Building Continues but gets Interrupted.

Mrs Great Tit worked very hard most of yesterday fetching material to build her nest in the camera nest box. For the first time I experimented with a cheap radio microphone to pick up some of the ambient sounds. The microphone listens through a hole in the back wall of the shed about a foot away from the box.



The furious activity came to an abrupt halt about 3.30p.m. when a Sparrowhawk caught a Starling in the back garden. Mrs GT had just left the nest and for a short while I was worried that she had been caught. Once the Sparrowhawk had caught its prey the surrounding birds kicked up a deafening row with their alarm calls. One photo opportunity I missed was when a brave? / silly? / angry? Blackbird dive bombed the raptor.



I also have video of much of the event which can be seen HERE. The Starling did its best to fight back and for a while the Sparrowhawk had to be very cautious as the Starling tried to attack with that long sharp beak.

Mrs GT didn't return to the nest box yesterday and I wondered if the event would put her off the site so I was relieved to see her visit the box about 7.30 this morning.

Friday at the Flicks - Nest Building, Robin, Tadpoles

Nest building in the camera nest box came to a halt for the best part of two days as heavy rain moved south over the country. We had one inch (about 24mm) in less than 24hrs - a lot for this part of the country. It won't go far towards alleviating the drought conditions though it did top up my pond.. At one stage the female Great Tit settled down in there, tucked her head under a wing and had a well deserved rest. This morning activity has started again and the nest is progressing slowly. This is a capture from this mornings activity. A lot of effort goes in to trying to tame the unruly bits of moss she brings.



One of the regulars at the bird table is a Robin Redbreast. Normally it nips in, grabs a bite to eat and rushes off again but this morning it stayed long enough to get some video.




The little bits of chocolate looking embryos are now recognisable tadpoles able to swim around the nursery pool looking for food.



 Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you wherever you are.

Wings on Wednesday - Nest Building Started

Over the past few days the Great Tits had been making more frequent and longer visits to the camera nest box so I was hoping it would be chosen again this year. Mid afternoon Monday saw the female Great Tit start fetching material to build a nest. This is a cut down version of some of the activity. Sometimes she would spend five minutes pushing the material around the bottom of the box. At one stage the male nearly got dive bombed as he was blocking the entrance to the box when she returned. As the female is the one with new feathers growing on her head it is easy to spot which is which.



This photograph I took last year after the youngsters had flown the nest will give an idea of how much work there is yet to do in making a cosy nest.



Just a quick visit was made by both to the box yesterday but a few rain showers seemed to put an end to nest building for a while. Heavy rain today so it will be a while before suitable nest building material will be available again.

Daffodil, Victorian Style

I spent a while scouring some sites for free illustrated ebooks about plants and gardening, not that I came up with much that was of interest to me. One title did catch my eye .....

  

(right click - open in a new tab - will show a larger view of illustrations)

... so I downloaded a copy to the iPad to see what it was about. I tried both the EPUB and PDF versions. The EPUB version loads pages quickly but is spoilt by short amounts of spurious gibberish text over many of the illustrations. This will be a result of whatever automated process was trying to interpret the fancy lettering. The PDF version is a perfect copy but each page can take a while to appear.

Here are a couple of pages - Daffa-Down-Dilly and Eyebright:

   

These are typical of what to expect from the rest of the book. I would find it difficult to identify many of the plants mentioned from the illustrations but then it was designed as a fantasy entertainment, not as a botanical reference.


For those who like to look for ebooks on the iPad, especially free ones, a useful app is 'eBook Search', itself a free download from the app store. In the app you can browse or search Project Gutenberg's 33,000 public domain books; Feedbooks (Classics and modern original books); Baen Books (SciFi and Fantasy), Smashwords (books from independent authors) and the Internet Archive's 1.8 million titles. Some sites have a mixture of free and paid books. Once a title is chosen it can be downloaded directly to the iBook reader or many other apps which can handle eBooks. Quality of copies, especially public domain and archived books can vary a lot but with only download time to lose it is worth a look at anything which tickles your fancy.

Of course using an iPad is not the only way to find and read eBooks. There are programs for the Mac and PC which can also do the job.

Macro on Monday - Guess What

Once more my congratulations and a     go to Anon in Minnesota, Adrian, Jan, Keith and Wilma who correctly identified the developing frog spawn in last week's mystery photo.





The photo was taken late in the day and the spawn appeared brown under the low angle of sunlight. With all the warm weather here in the past week many of them are now freely swimming tadpoles.

I wonder what you will make of this week's puzzle photo
Guess What:


If you need a clue: It won't be slithering across the rockery.

No prizes - just for fun.

Exercise For People Over 50

EXERCISE FOR PEOPLE OVER 50:
 

Begin by standing on a comfortable surface, where you have plenty of room at each side.
 

With a 5-lb  potato bag in each hand, extend your arms straight out from your sides and hold them there as long as you can. Try to reach a full minute, and then relax.
 

Each day you'll find that you can hold this position for just a bit longer.

After a couple of weeks, move up to 10-lb  potato bags.
 

Then try 50-lb potato bags, (I'm at this level) and then eventually try to get to where you can lift a 100-lb potato bag in each hand and hold your arms straight for more than a full minute.

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After you feel confident at that level, put a potato in each bag. ;>)