Another year drawing to an end and time to survey and clean FOAW’s nest boxes once more.
It is important to clean old nesting materials from the nest boxes so that lice, fleas and diseases do not infect next year’s broods.
We had six volunteers in the morning, and split into two teams – the robins, led by your correspondent, and the blue tits led by Steve Joul.
Robins like to nest in secret places and their nest boxes – which have a large open front – were concealed in the middle of holly bushes. For the first half hour of searching, Team Robins were unable to find the first two boxes we sought. However, we eventually found five of the six robin boxes placed by FOAW.
Four had not been used for nesting for the second year running – and it may be time to try moving them to different locations. One contained a nest – and interestingly this was the one which was used for nesting last year – which again suggests that the others may not be in suitable positions.
Aerial view of the nest in the robin nest box
Comparing our nest with nests on the internet,it is unclear whether our nest was a robin’s nest or a blue or great tit’s nest.
Robin’s nest box used for the storage of acorns and the like.
One of our robin nest boxes – placed at low level – had been used by a squirrel or other creature for the storage of food.
Team blue tit surveyed and cleaned the nest boxes provided for blue tits, great tits, nuthatches and similar sized birds. Since all of these nest boxes were fixed at least three metres above ground, this required climbing a ladder and nerves of steel!
Virtually all of the tit boxes surveyed had been used for nesting – including one half eaten by squirrels – which, as Steve Joul commented, shows that the raising of young in Adel Woods is limited by the availability of nesting sites rather than by food or other factors.
One thing we did discover this year, though, was that there were more unhatched eggs in the nest boxes than we have found in previous years. This may be due to the extremely wet summer we have had, or perhaps the very warm spell in early Spring followed by cooler, wet weather.
Steve Joul examines a the nesting material from the nuthatch nest.
At lunchtime, Team Robin and Team Blue Tit dispersed to carry out Christmas shopping and other familial duties. However, the team leaders stayed on in the afternoon as “Team Robin Blue Tit” to survey further tit boxes. In the course of our survey, we were visited and egged on by Beth, Graham and Judith – for which we are grateful.
In the afternoon we found one of the tit boxes contained a nuthatch nest – which is entirely different in character from a blue tit or great tit nest, being made of little chips of birch bark. We know that tit box 38 down by the Slabbering Baby was used by a pair of nuthatches this year, and so that is two pairs of nesting nuthatches at least this year.
Friends of Adel Woods 