And so we face, the final coytun.
Anna and I have this morning taken down our Tits' nestbox, and cleaned it out, (photos below).
We were hoping NOT to find any unhatched (off) eggs, or any dead undeveloped fledglings - both would have been left to be trodden into the fabric of the nest by the parents.
We didn't. It seems all our eggs hatched, all developed into successful fledglings.
The nest was quite flat - expected I suppose with all the little bodies bouncing around in there, but still quite springy.
The main construction was hewn from dried grass stalks, packed together with moss (lots and lots of moss), witha circular area in the middle, lined with feathers and pale fur. It was indeed a very neat job by Anne!
We have scraped the nestbox out and put the nest on the compost heap, re-erecting the box where it was before - for no real reason.
As for our Tits?
What has become of them?
I left you with the rather sad notion I'm sure, that they'd buggered off.
Well....
They're BACK!
We have (with great delight, I should point out) seen at least 4 (possibly 5) chicks ALL visit the garden to be fed by good old Scargill and Anne.
Our wee niblets are fantastic! They are quite squat, very fluffy, pale yellow, and have a shorter tail than their parents.
They seem to still be lacking in a little bit of confidence when it comes to landing from a flight; one tried a bit like a hummingbird, to land on our washing line, about 4 times in ten seconds. It failed!
This morning I had 4 baby Blue Tits all lined up together on our fence, begging food from Scargill and Anne.
I'm now pretty sure we only had FIVE chicks hatch (all of them) and five fledge. We've seen 5 too often now, for it to be a coincidence, so even though it could be more, we'll settle on FIVE as the final figure.
We have had quite atrocious weather here over the last 2 days - constant heavy rain and a strong, biting wind. Its fair to say that if our fledglings were still developing in the nest at this point, and we had no food for them, I would be ecpecting them to die.
Springwatch starts on BBC2 tonight - a wonderful programme if you are able to get over the infuriating witerings of the fat dwarf Bill Oddie. I' sure they'll mention what effect this terrible 2 or 3 days weather is having on small birds. I fear for the local Swifts at the moment also.
Anyway, we've got a few Waxworms and Mealworms left for our Blue Tit family - enough for today at least, and the weather cannot stay like this all week.
There you go.
We draw the saga to an end, and a really happy end at that! We are SO pleased they've returned!
On this post (62) I will eventually draw up a table of 'what happened when',( re: our Tits), when I have some time (mainly for personal use I guess), and intend to add a GIF animation of our first fledgling, to leave you with, if it works...
Thanks again for sharing the lives of "Scargill", "Anne" and family with us.
Until next year....?
Well... we do hope so!
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