Situated in a suburban back garden in West Derby Liverpool , A Schwegler Woodcrete nestbox, and a purpose built Blue/Great Tit  Box have been placed facing North/North-East.

This website follows the progress of our nesters as they build their nest, lay eggs and rear their young.

Surprise, surprise last year we had an unexpected occupation of our  wooden Sparrow Terrace, not by  Sparrows but a late/2nd Great Tit family  in June/July. Sadly no camera in the end terrace, so number of chicks fully fledged unknown, certainly a few hearty voices calling out and needless to say the mealworm order was on late  run!.  Will we have tenants this year? 

Nessa has continued to lay an egg each day, ninth was laid 27/04 clutch equal to our previous great tit family Fancy & Fernando in 2009, Hiri and Henry in 2008 had ten. 

Stacey keeps building, no eggs.  Could she or Gavin be infertile?  According to the experts egg laying can be  dependant on temperature and food availability, but hasn't  been a problem for our Great tits?  Is she waiting for Ness and Smithy to finish their brood, perceived as local competition?

28/04/10 Today there are still Nine eggs in Nessa's nest  and she appears to have settled down to brood.

Time to hatching? Incubation time based on previous years 13 -15 days, so were looking at 9th May 10 onwards.

Estimated time to fledging? Approx 18-21 days from hatching so were looking at  26 May onwards

Alas Smithy did not return.  Nessa our single parent Great tit endeavours to bring up her brood. Of the 9 eggs laid, 7 hatched, 6 nestlings remain. The babies are now 10 days old and their development appears slow compared to previous yrs, I'm surmising it's probably due  to the reduced feeding rate.  Needless to say the mainstay of their diet appears to be  the mealworms we've been putting out. 

O.K. we've had the Aaarh's but how about a spot of serious study business. 

Thought  it would be a good idea  to observe the insect meals being brought into the nest.  So what delights do baby Great tits have f or breakfast, lunch and dinner?  A count was made over a 12 hr period from 8.30am to 8.30pm on the 15/05/10 when the chicks were 7 days old. In total 118 meals were brought into the nestlings by their hard working mother, equating to roughly 19 meals each for six chicks. This was further broken down into food types hourly (see table below). Not sure of the identify of some of the large insects brought in (fortunately no child obesity worries here) but mealworms came top of the list at 63%,  a choice selection of succulent scary spiders were next ( easy to squeeze the juice out!)  17 mixed bug life/large unidentified caterpillars and 3 little green caterpillars,  favourite baby food of our Blue tit parents.

Hopefully our  story will reach a successful end and Ness's family will fledge. Dependant on events I plan to do another count when the surviving chicks are 14 days old on the 22/05/10.

Conclusion mealworms featured high on the menu unsurprisingly,  and it proves what the experts say;  that Great tits aim for larger prey than their smaller Blue tit cousins. I wonder how she  would have fared without the supplementary feeding, I don't think I would ever have the strength to deny them and answer that question.

A second 12 hr count was made from 8.am to 8pm on the 22/05/10 when the chicks were 14 days old. In total 137 meals were brought into the nestlings by their hard working mother, equating to roughly 27 meals each for five chicks. This was further broken down into food types hourly (see table below). Not sure of the identify of some of the large insects brought in (fortunately no child obesity worries here) but mealworms came top of the list at 68%,  a choice selection of succulent scary spiders were next ( easy to squeeze the juice out!)  17 mixed bug life/large unidentified caterpillars and 3 little green caterpillars,  favourite baby food of our Blue tit parents.

A 8 hr count was made from 12pm to 8pm on the Bank Holiday Monday when the chicks were 11 days old. In total 231meals were brought in by both parents, equating to roughly 26 meals each for nine surviving  chicks. This was further broken down into food types hourly (see table above). Mealworms came top of the list again at 47%,  surprisingly their were fewer  green caterpillars than I would have expected ( usual favourite Blue tits).

If we average up the meals to represent a 12hr count at this rate of feeding we may expect 39 meals for each chick each which shows Stacey's chicks getting 44% more food.

  Stacey & Gavin's nifty nine fledge. (Click camera)

A Camera suitable for use in a nest box?

The camera boards used in this  years project are model, 117CTA/1 Colour Camera, from Henry's CCTV centre, London.   The Sony EXVIEW HI RES 520TVL & Sony HQX CCD 550TVL from  RF Concepts, and a simple wireless camera bought from a local market.  

These board cameras are relatively small and  are easily concealed in the roof spaces of a bird boxes.

Don't forget it is common sense to test the camera first before installing the circuit board in your nest box!!. Unfortunately our camera 3232CP developed a problem in 2006 and ceased to function  just as our brood fledged, yes a disaster. We removed the camera after the fledglings had left, no obvious sign of damage and we assume a chip ? may have blown. Good enough Henry's  replaced the camera as we had only had it 2 mths and new model 117CTA/1 Colour Camera has been installed in the new starling box we will check it intermittently over the coming months.

The supplied SCART adaptor connects to a domestic television, video recorder or DVD recorder. Or ..... you can connect directly (yellow phono connector) to the 'Video In' on your computer's capture card / TV card, you will also need a separate white  audio connector for sound .