Monthly Archives: January 2019

A beautiful morning. Three of us met up with Steve Joul in Old Leo’s carpark at 10 am to complete the survey of the nest boxes in Adel Wood – on the stretch of the Meanwood Valley Trail from the Slabbering Baby to the Seven Arches.

We set off down to the Slabbering Baby where our first nest box was number 38 by the bridge over Nanny Back. This seems to be a nest box favoured by nuthatches, and we weren’t disappointed this year. You can always tell in advance when a nest box has been used by nuthatches because they fill all possible gaps in the structure of the nest with mud. When you open the box, the nest is made of chips of bark, whereas the tit nests are made from a variety of materials – moss, manmade fibres, grass and hair. There are some pictures of a nuthatch nest below.

We then surveyed the fourteen nest boxes from the Slabbering Baby to the Seven Arches. On our way we were joined for 45 minutes or so by David – for which we were grateful!

Most of the nest boxes were used in the 2018 breeding season. There were a couple of particularly interesting observations.

Box 40, which is about halfway between the Slabbering Baby and the Seven Arches, had a long story to tell. It contained a lot of nesting materials and an unhatched tit egg, which indicates that it was successfully used for breeding. However, upon examining the contents of the nest material, Steve found a number of dead bumble bees which presumably used the box for nesting too. This hypothesis is supported by the presence of a large number of wax moth cocoons and larvae. The species of bumble bee was bombus hypnorum which migrated to the UK from Europe since the beginning of the 21st century. This species likes to nest in nest boxes.

Box number 48, the next nest box down from number 40, was used by nuthatches. Interestingly, nuthatches started to use this nest box in 2017 – we could tell by the mud plastered around the outside of the box – but were clearly driven off by tits because when we surveyed it (in January last year), the box contained a tit nest.

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We finished the nest box survey at about 1.30 pm after a thoroughly enjoyable morning in Adel Woods.

Thank you Steve Joul! and thanks to all who helped in this gargantuan task.

Six of us joined Steve Joul this morning for our annual nest box survey, clean and refurbishment.

The weather was very mild and dry, but we got off to a slow start as a miscommunication meant that your correspondent had to go and fetch a wheelbarrow and some hard hats before we could begin!

We started off by going up into the Alwoodley plantation via the diagonal path which runs from Crag Lane up into Alwoodley Plantation.

Passing the bat boxes (which we do not survey because we are not licensed), we started with number 17 and then worked our way round to number 11. On our way we refurbished number 6, a robin box, by adding a plastic covering to the roof – which keeps the nest boxes nice and dry.

From there we cleaned and surveyed nest boxes along Crag Lane to the picnic area.

Two of our number had to leave about 1 pm. The rest of us completed surveying the nest boxes in the picnic area, and then retired to your correspondent’s house for a sandwich, drink and piece of Christmas cake.

We resumed work at about 3 pm, starting with the final two nest boxes on Crag Lane near Old Leo’s clubhouse – number 14 and letter T on the map. Box T is a woodcrete nest box donated by Tina nine years ago. Inside, there is wooden base for the nesting area which the occupants have partly pecked away over the years. We replaced this with a new piece of wood.

From here we joined the Meanwood Valley Trail and cleaned and surveyed the nest boxes down to Adel Pond. En route we placed box number 15, which we took down to repair last year, in a holly bush on the MVT.

We finished work at about 4.15 pm when it was getting dark.

Most of the nest boxes were used again. Of the two robin boxes surveyed, neither had been used by robins, but one had been used by a family of tits.

Last Summer was particularly warm and dry. This may have affected some of the things we noticed when surveying the nest boxes. There were probably fewer unhatched eggs in the boxes we surveyed today. Thankfully, there were no skeletons of chicks in any of the nest boxes we surveyed today. On some years we have found skeletons in a few of the boxes.

We also noticed that the majority of the lids of the wooden boxes – far more than in previous years – were stuck down where clothes moth larvae had eaten into the wood of the lid and the box. Many of the boxes contained living larvae – small white caterpillar type creatures. The boxes also seemed to contain a lot more spiders than we have found on previous occasions.

A highlight of this afternoon’s survey was that we met someone who takes his Harris Hawk for a walk in the woods and Steve had the thrill of holding the hawk on his hand!

We all agreed that it had been a very satisfying and enjoyable day.