Blue Tits

These are the other kind of Tit that occupy our nestbox, They are Blue Tits. The way to tell Male from Female is by the size of the Blue patch on the head, the Male having more Blue than the Female . You will probably notice that all these pictures show a Female, we don't know what happened to the Male, just that one day He disappeared and we never saw Him again, Mabey He had a mistress in the next Hedgrow, who knows?

 The average Brood is anywhere between 7 to 16 Eggs and the usually hatch in around 2 weeks and fledge approx 10 days later, The most sucessful brood in our box so far was 9.

               The Female with Lunch for the little ones, anyone fancy a nice juicy caterpillar?

As you can see, Mum looks a bit ragged due to the fact that she was having to raise them all on Her own.

                                                                    Feed Me Mom!

                                           Wow! There's a whole world out there to explore. :)

 The day after all the little ones fledged, I went to check the nestbox and to clean it out, to my surprise I found this little one still in the box.

I closed the box up and kept an eye on it, happily Mum came back regularly to feed it over the next 2 days and it fledged succesfully.

Great Tits

Here in the UK we have several different kinds of Tit, the ones here are Great Tits (Sorry if this is not what you expected, but thanks for the view! lol). We have been lucky, so far, that in the 6 years since I put up our nest box we have had Tits nesting every year except this year. The largest number of fledglings we have had is 9, which were a family of Blue Tits.

Adult Great Tit

 

The way to tell Male and Female apart is by the black stripe down the chest, the male has a much broader stripe than the Female.

    Male

Female

 

These two look a bit ragged due to the fact that they were feeding 7 fledglings, it was amazing to see how many times they visited the nest with food, almost non-stop from dawn to dusk.

         

                                                                          Feed Me!

 The Female usually lays between 5 and 11 eggs and they hatch in approximately 16 days and fledge in 26

                                                           Fledgling leaving the nest

 They usually head for a small pine tree in our garden as that gives them the most cover,

 

Once they are ready they will usually head for some thick bushes near our garden, however even this can be fraught with danger. I thought all our little ones had made it safely to the large hedge, but I kept hearing a desperate cheeping noise from the area of the car park. I noticed that one of the adults was hopping around near the drain cover in the corner. On investigation I found that one of the little ones had fallen down the drain. I managed to lift the cover and rescue it, and happily it joined it's parents and siblings safely.

                                                               The Rescued Baby

Well that's all for this time, Next time I will be looking at Blue Tits and Long Tailed Tits.

Introduction

Well, this is my first attempt at blogging so I guess I'd best introduce myself  and talk about what I do.

 I am a Pagan, and an amateur photographer with a passion for wildlife. I try to share my love of Nature through my photographs and I hope that by sharing my pictures I can encourage others to stop and look at the wonders around us all.

 A couple of years ago, I was out walking with my Wife and we spotted this little one

Naturaly I stopped to take some pictures, but what happened next really made my Day (Heck, it made my YEAR!). Whilst I was taking trying to take some pics He/She ran down the tree, up my back and dissapeared into my rucsack. I handed the camera to my missus and these are the shots She got of My 'up close and personal' encounter with the Baby Squirrel.

 The little one made another raid on my Rucsack and I had to get it out again

We finished our encounter with a game of 'Hide and Seek'

                                                       8...9...10...here I come!

Well thats all for this time, I hope you have enjoyed sharing this encounter with Me. :)