Nest box niceness

We tend not to do much general mist netting at this time of year -during the breeding season- but we do check the various nest box schemes we have in the patch. Kev has been doing the Belvide nestboxes this year, and he will report on them soon when he's completed them all.

Yesterday and today we looked at our farmland boxes and as usual most were Blue tits with well grown chicks in most of them. We had Great tits in only one box ( out of 9), but the birds in two boxes were rather unexpected.

Robins nest in a wide variety of places but not usually in a hole-nesting box. The hole in this particular box was a little bigger than usual and inside was a really healthy brood of 6 well grown chicks. The pictures show the rather cute tufts of down still on the head above the eyes:-

While the second shows a feature of most passerines ( but more so the "chat" group to which robins belong)-which is the rapid development of the legs.

The legs of nestlings tend to be thicker than fledged birds. This is because they have a rich blood supply and their tissues are growing rapidly. In some cases we need to use a slightly bigger ring for nestlings than for fledged birds. Once the legs are grown, the blood supply is reduced and as the tissues harden and dry, the legs get thinner, and appear as we see them in the field.

 

We have only ringed one Nuthatch at the feeding station near one box, which surprisingly had a brood of 6 very robust Nuthatch nestlings in it. I thought this might be the case because the entrance hole had a few bits of hardened mud around it--something Nuthatch parents typically do .Although these chicks were quite large, being in a box meant that they could be safely replaced  and the hole covered for a minute or two after ringing to make sure they settled down-which they did. Even at this stage of their development we were able to sex the nestlings. The males have a dark chestnut area between the top of the thigh and the underwing as shown here

Whereas the female lacks the coloured area-as shown here:-

It shouldn't be too long until we have a look at our Kestrel boxes. Our experienced pair look like they are in residence again; and excitingly the second box we put up on the farm appears to have a pair nesting also. It's likely this will be a young/inexperienced pair so we're not sure how many chicks there will be or how successful they will be. More on this in a couple of weeks I hope