BLUE TITS (41)

Our Tits are really upping the food-collection ante now. They've guzzled all the Waxworms their parents have collected from the feeder, and are pretty well through the much tougher Mealworms too. Anna is off to buy some more tubs of worms from the farm shop this afternoon (its very close to her work), so we'll have more for the Tits over the next week. Remember, I expect them to fledge in 2 weeks, pretty-well exactly.

Anna and I roughly calculated that we think our baby Blue Tits will have eaten somewhere between 2000 and 3000 caterpillars or insects between them, by the time they fledge - impressive eh?!
Its nice to see also, that the adults are mixing and matching their favourite wild food, bright green caterpillars, with our live Meal and Waxworms. The chicks seem to be getting a balanced diet - "greens"! (green caterpillars) with their protein (Mealworms) and fat (Waxworms)!

Any Mealworms that escape the "sieve of doom" by crawling up and out (the Mealworms seem to be slightly better at this than the fatter Waxworms) are soon hoovered up by our visiting hen Blackbird - I'll write more about her shortly, and post a photo of said "Sieve of Doom", when I get a chance to take one...

NB. FYI I will refer to the manky male Blue Tit from now on as "Scargill". This is because he looks like Arthur Scargill - he's (now at least) butt ugly, with bulgy eyes AND a comb-over. I haven't thought of a name for the female yet, but Scargill fits the bill for the male, perfectly!