Friends of Adel Woods

This is the final part of a trilogy! To get most out of it, please have a look at our blog entries for Saturday the 24th January and Sunday the 25th January 2026.

Completing the survey

On Saturday and Sunday, we were unable to find three of our nest boxes. On Monday and Tuesday yours truly had a quick look and found them easily – we must have been tired at the weekend.

One was a robin box and it was unused.

The other two were tit boxes and a ladder was needed to survey them, so Steve Joul and yours truly went out today to have a look.

One of the nest boxes contained a tit nest. The other contained a small amount of nesting material but no nest. Because this nest box was a lot smaller than other nest boxes, and it has never been used for nesting, we replaced it with a larger refurbished nest box.

And to Conclude: a Summary of our January 2026 Nest Box Survey

Friends of Adel Woods currently have 41 nest boxes in Adel Woods – in Alwoodley Crags plantation, along Crag Lane and along the Meanwood Valley Trail between Adel Crag and the Seven Arches aqueduct.

Of the 41 nest boxes, 36 are tit boxes, 4 are robin boxes and one was intended to be a treecreeper nest box (more about that below!).

The tit boxes

We have a record of what we found in 26 of the 27 tit boxes – in the excitement we forgot to write down what we found in one of them!

Of the 26, 17 contained successful nests. 4 contained unfinished nests. 7 were used for roosting (indicated by droppings) of which 4 did not contain nests or nesting material.

So, in summary, 25 of the 26 tit nests were used – 17 for nesting, 4 for attempted nesting, and 4 for roosting only.

As in previous years we found that the nests were built using moss, grass and straw, and many nests contained man-made fuzzy material like the surface of tennis balls. The man-made material was of varying colours – white, red, orange, green and yellow.

Five of the nests contained 1 unhatched egg which indicates that on the whole all of the nests were very successful. In previous years we have found nests with a number of unhatched eggs, and sometimes a number of skeletons of chicks.

In previous years, we have often found that one or two of the nest boxes are used by nuthatches, but this year there were no nuthatch nests. Their nests are easy to spot from the outside because nuthatches seal up all holes and cracks in the nest box with mud. The nest itself is very different from a tit nest: the nesting material consists solely of bark chips so that the nest looks like a bowl of bran flakes!

Some of the nest boxes provided homes for other creatures. Many contained spiders of varying species. Some of the nest boxes also provided a home for woodlice and slugs

Several of the nest boxes contained larvae of clothes moths.

One nest box contained a tit nest, a tree bumblebee nest and wax moth cocoons: see our blog for Sunday 25th January for more details.

The robin boxes

Robins usually nest close to the ground and like an open nest. For this reason, robin boxes have an open front as shown in the photograph. They will not nest in tit boxes, but have been known to nest in old kettles, lanterns, flower pots, car bonnets, boots, post boxes and even clothes pockets.

Of the 4 robin boxes, 3 were completely unused and 1 contained some nesting material but no nest. In previous years, tits have occasionally nested in a robin box and so it is likely that the nesting material was put there by tits – it certainly looked like typical tit nesting material.

One of the robin boxes contained a population of springtails which was a first for yours truly.

The treecreeper nest box

We put up the treecreeper nest box in January 2015. As you can see from the photograph it is very deep, and rather than having a round hole in the front, it has a slit in the right hand side as treecreepers like to nest in the cracks behind loose bark.

We have never had treecreepers nest in the box. One year we had a successful tit nest. More often we have found that squirrels have used the box for nesting and filled the box with small leaves. One year we found a mummified squirrel in the box!

This year we found a large amount of mossy material in the box but no nest.

About Friends of Adel Woods

We hope that you have enjoyed reading about our activities and would be delighted if you would like to join us.

Friends of Adel Woods were formed in 2009 to help maintain Adel Woods and encourage people to enjoy them. We meet one weekend morning a month to carry out various jobs or ”work parties”, and we also put on educational events such as bat walks, fungal forays and birdsong walks.

We are a very friendly group and welcome new members who want to help preserve our special woods, enjoy fresh air and exercise in the woods, and make new friends. 

If you would like to take part in our activities, keep an eye on our Home Page.  You don’t need to book to come along to one of our work “parties”: just come along! 

If you would like to join our email mailing list, please get in touch by leaving a comment on this website – you should be able to see a comment box at the bottom of this page.