BLUE TITS (5)

I have changed my opinion on the sexes of our Blue Tits, for the last time (with any luck).
I have been desperately trawling through books and websites trying to get a relatively accurate picture of Blue Tit ecology and sexual dimorphism (if it exists).
What I have come to understand is that the male does none of the nest building in the main,and if anything is slightly brighter than the female.
I was under the impression until yesterday that we had a "new-age Man-Tit" building the family nest for his "wife". This doesn't seem to be likely in Tits, and after yesterday, when we watched the smaller (skinnier) of the two do all the nest material work, under the watcful eye of the plumper Tit, I have certainly come to the definitive conclusion that the larger bird is the MALE, and the skinnier (more hard-working, nest-building) bird is actually the FEMALE.
Many websites have shown me that the male will visit the box first, and may call the female if the coast is clear, the female will then arrive, and pretty well as soon as she does, the male will bugger off.
The websites that I've seen documenting this VERY COMMON behaviour, all have the male enter the inside of the nest box and crouch in the corner, out of the way of the female. OUR nest box has a chopstick perch however, so in the case of our Tits, the male has no need to enter the box and crouch out of the way - he simply keeps a lookout, and out of the way, by perching on the chopstick! Our female will then fly straight into the box, when he will join her and then bugger off quickly.

These websites (some with box-cams running NOW) have also shown me that our Tits are quite precocious, yes indeedy. Most boxes have the odd bit of moss in at the moment, and Tits struggling to know quite how to build a nest or whether they should or not.
Our Tits must have half-filled their nest box by now, with moss, twigs etc... and seem to be having no problem at all with their nest-building technique. We have SKILLED TITS.
I'm sitting here overlooking the box now and the female is heaving another 'log' into the box, 12' away from me...

One last thing, because we think we know now, that the male is the more rotund of the two, it is clear that on bottom of the rhs of his face he has what looks like a black scar (from around his 'Craiggggg Davvviiddd beard'). I hope you can pick out this tiny detail in the photos above - it seems to be a relatively good way of telling the male and female apart.
The female is more 'svelte', at least at the moment, before she starts producing eggs, and rather confusingly enough, seems to have a more mobile, erectile crest on top of her head. This would suggest again, that I've got it wrong, and she is in fact a he, but I don't think so. She's just excited about her des-res nest I think.

The last four above photos are of the male Tit. In the final photo (Tit facing right) you can make out the male's anomaly in his "Crrraiggg Davvvid beard".

The first photo is of the female (facing away from the camera) with a (tiny, for her!) twig in her gob.