FIRST NEST

My good mate and nest finding Guru Steve Carter has found his first nest of the season, although still not complete this Long Tailed Tits nest is a stunning construction of moss bound together with spiders webs and hair covered on the outside with lichen and lined with feathers. 

long tailed tit nest

Here's a photo taken a while ago of a Long Tailed Tit

I've been trying to get some less commoner species at my feeders so tried this bit of camouflage sheet draped over the window.

my attempt at concealment from the birds that come into my feeders

Although they're still great to see only the usual suspects are showing up thus far. 

Here's a small selection. 

To be fair the Pied Wagtails have only showed up over the last couple of days.

Here's hoping that Steve has a successful nesting season and I get to photograph something out of the ordinary.

Thanks for calling by and I'll catch you soon.

MARCH 1st

 Happy St. David's Day.

On the weekend I embarked on the annual nestbox cleaning and maintenance work. Emptying all the old nesting material out of the boxes and doing some repair work, also replaced a couple of boxes that were beyond saving.

All should be ready for the new nesting season, having said that some birds are already paired up and starting to build their nests even this early in the year.

With a big help from my step son Luke who can climb a tree like a monkey, we or should I say he managed to site our new owl box which I actually built last spring. Might be a bit late for this year but fingers crossed our regular breeding Tawney's will find it in time to breed this year.

our new owl box

The bird numbers are starting to pick up at the feeders with birds like this male Siskin making an appearance.

It's the first day of spring today and after the long dark days of winter combined with the never ending pandemic of  Covid 19 it'll be a welcome relief to have the lighter nights and some fine weather.