Sunday 26h May

Box 1 - 6 pulli
Box 2 - Blue tit sitting
Box 3 - Blue tit sitting with small pulli
Box 4 - Blue tit sitting with small pulli
Box 5 - Great tit sitting
Box 6 - Blue tit sitting with small pulli
Box 7 - Great tit sitting
Box 8 - Blue tit sitting with small pulli
Box 9 - 6 dead pulli
Box 10 - 9 small pulli
Box 11 and 12 - empty
Box 13 - Great tit sitting
Box 14 - Blue tit sitting with small pulli

7th May

Checked the boxes and things are looking good:

 

Box 1 - 6 eggs, uncovered, warm

Box 2 - 6 eggs, uncovered, warm

Box 3 - 5 eggs, uncovered, cold

Box 4 - 8 eggs, uncovered, cold

Box 5 - 4 eggs, covered, cold

Box 6 - 5 eggs, covered, warm

Box 7 - N4

Box 8 - Blue tit sitting

Box 9 - Great tit sitting

Box 10 - 10 eggs, uncovered, warm

Boxes 11 and 12 are empty

Box 13 - N3

Box 14 - 6 eggs, covered, warm

Saturday 18th May

Box 1 - Great tit sitting

Box 2 - Blue tit sitting - flew out then back - 6 eggs

Box 3 - Blue tit sitting

Box 4 - Blue tit sitting

Box 5 - Great tit sitting

Box 6 - Blue tit sitting

Box 7 - Great tit sitting

Box 8 - Blue tit sitting

Box 9 - Great tit - 6? pulli - blind

Box 10 - Blue tit sitting

Boxes 11 and 12 are empty

Box 13 - Great tit sitting

Box 14 - Blue tit sitting

Update on bird boxes

 

Things are looking up in Newditch plantation!

 

Apart from 3 boxes with no activity, and 1 occupied by a bunch of snails!, the other 10 boxes have either 1/2, 2/3 or fully completed nests.

Box 8 has 2 eggs but both were uncovered and felt cold :-(

 

The birds have been busy since last week!

Nestbox check - 16/4/2013 - 21/4/2013

A disappointing, but unsurprising visit to check the nestboxes, showed only 2 of 14 boxes have any sign of nesting having started this year.
One of the boxes had a Blue tit 'scolding' in the tree above, but otherwise the wood was fairly quiet.
A visit in a weeks time is planned...

21/4/2013

Not much more progress - 1 completed nest, and 3 started.....

Cambridge Conservation Volunteers

We were lucky to have the Cambridge Conservation volunteers visit us again in July 2012.

They assisted with balsam bashing and we hope we can get them to help us again in 2013.

Nestbox success summary 2012                                                                                                                                                         

Newditch Plantation

2012 started very well with birds starting to build nests towards the end of March.    
By 14th April 2 nests had eggs and a further 6 had completed nests.
By 30th April 11 nests had eggs and/or birds sitting.
Things were looking good. However at the beginning of May although some eggs had hatched and some birds were still sitting, half of the eggs present were cold and uncovered, tending to imply that the parents had either been predated, or could only exert effort to feed themselves. This was put down to the change in weather.
By mid-May many of the hatchlings were still very small and only 2/3rds of the eggs had hatched.
By the beginning of June the number fledged was down to 1/2 of the number fledged in 2012. The story from other bird boxes was very similar, attributed to both the change in the weather conditions, and the lack of food available for parent birds to raise chicks.

                                                                            Eggs       Nestlings   Fledged

Place totals:            Nests:  11                                   75          50          35

We are hoping that 2013 will be a better year .....