The 2013 Nestbox Diary

Introduction - up to May 11

At last I am getting to grips with getting the Nest Box Diary underway. I won't repeat the entries that were made in the garden diary over the last month, but here is a brief summary of what has happened so far.

First, it seems that our Blue/Great Tit box had failed once again to attract any customers. On the other hand, its roof (complete with cctv camera) has given our local Blackbird pair a possible location for their nest(s). Unfortunately, the female is now on her second brood, having chosen to build her nest in the conifers beyond the end of the garden. Nevertheless her partner (known as White Spot) continues to make daily visits to the monitored site - perhaps the next brood...

For the moment it is the Swifts that I turn my attention to, although I will not be able to spend anywhere as much time monitoring them as I have in the past.

The first Swift arrived in SW(le) at 6.47am on 7 May, and that evening, at about 9pm another Swift arrived in SW(ri). At 5.55pm on the 9th a second Swift arrived in SW(le) to complete our first pair of the season.

Prior to the Swifts' arrival in SW(le) there was a nest built by a House Sparrow male. However, there had been no sign of a female and so no eggs were present. The male made one brief attempt to defend the nest but was evicted with little effort by the first Swift to arrive.

The nest sites that I'm monitoring:

First, the camera equipped Swift boxes which are on a north-facing wall -

SW(up) and SW(lo), my original Swift boxes, not used by Swifts last year despite SW(up) having been used previous to that.

SW(le) and SW(ri) - originally Starling boxes but with the entrances remodeled.

Both of these were used by Swifts last year, successfully bringing up two pairs of offspring.

This year I have to record daily activity in the four Swift boxes via a combined video feed so that I am not usually able to capture good quality stills for the diary.

At the front of the house are a trio of artificial House Martin nests, not used my Martins for a number of years after bad summer weather resulted in a failed brood.

There is also a set of four Swift boxes, put up in 2012 and waiting for their first occupants. These are not yet equipped with cameras - this may change following a successful occupation.

So far this season, all nests/boxes in this composite image are being visited by Sparrows on a daily basis, although so far I have seen no sign of nesting taking place.

Finally, to the bottom of the garden, and to my first camera equipped nest box, monitored since 2000.

The box itself, which faces east, was used by both Blue and Great Tits, but not for the last few years.

More recently it's the roof of the box that has attracted the interest of our local Blackbirds, although they have yet to produce a successful brood there

I hope to set up a webcam in the next day or so. For the moment it will take the same form as in previous years, with still images being refreshed every few seconds. At some point I may find enough time to make the change to streaming video, but I'll make no promises on that. It was one of the things I hoped to experiment with during the Winter, but like everything else that plan fell apart. I certainly hope that I can sort streaming out, if not for this season then for 2014.

12 May - Webcam now in operation

A bright, sunny morning, and our fourth Swift arrives.

The overnight occupant of SW(ri) left the box at 7.45am, the pair in SW(le) waiting until 8.10am to head out.

Then, at 8.35am not one, but two Swifts entered SW(ri), bringing us back to the two pairs that we had last year. 

A great deal of mutual preening went on before the pair settled down.

The arrival at 9.03am of one of next-door's occupants with a beak full of feathers had little effect on the pair,

but the somewhat noisy entry of its partner five minutes later caused chaos in SW(ri), with one of the pair (the new arrival?) leaving in what can only be described as sheer panic!

This evening as we head towards a damp dusk the boxes present a much more tranquil sight, with both Swift pairs seemingly tucked up together for the night and the lone Sparrow, roosting by the entrance of SW(up).

I don't expect to see any Swifts in SW(up) / SW(lo) until the young adult Swifts arrive and start looking for prospective nest sites much later in the season, perhaps July. However, in the meantime those boxes may be used by Sparrows for nesting as well as roosting.

There were no Blackbird visits to the monitored site today.

15 May - I've had precious little time to watch the Swifts these last few days, but with poor weather, and low temperatures descending on us I don't think they have ventured too far afield.

Having said that, I was out by my car earlier this evening as heavy rain moved towards us from the southwest, and there was a group of six Swifts flying low between the houses and screaming. It leaves me wondering if at least one of the boxes that I put on the houses of neighbours also has a pair of Swifts in residence.

With no activity recorded at the Blackbird nest site over the last three days I have decided to cease monitoring that camera for the moment so that I can use the recorder to record images from the two occupied Swift boxes via a timer controlled switching box.

Over the next couple of weeks diary entries may be intermittent or even completely absent due to family commitments. However, daily recordings will allow me to record important events that occur and will update the diary as and when I can.

The gap at this point was due to our heading down to Cornwall for a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, a problem caused the webcam image to freeze almost as soon as we left home so I wasn't able to keep a watch on progress or sort out the problem, which simply needed me to restart the webcam software -

26 May - First egg laid in SW(le)

29 May - Second egg laid in SW(le)

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