Friends of Adel Woods

Last Sunday we started the process of surveying and cleaning the Friends of Adel Woods nest boxes and we completed about two thirds of them. Today, the weather was a bit warmer and thirteen of us set out on our nest box safari to survey and clean the remaining boxes.

Our first port of call was to put back up our best nest box, the two hole Schwegler nest box on Crag Lane near Old Leo’s car park. We took this down last week because it needed a new nail to hold it up.

Having secured the nest box, we made our way down to the Slabbering Baby. When cleaning the nest box there, we noticed what looked like a piece of fabric on the underside of the box. It was not fabric, but the eggs of the vapourer moth – which I had never heard of before.

Vapourer moths are common throughout the UK. The female is virtually wingless, and spends her life attached to the cocoon from which she emerged, She attracts males by releasing pheromones – which is why they are call vapourer moths – and lays her eggs on what remains of her cocoon. When hatched, the very hairy caterpillars feed on a range of deciduous trees and shrubs. Gardeners know them as rusty tussock caterpillars and considered them a pest.

From the Slabbering Baby we made our way to nest box 29A by Nanny Beck. This nest box often provides a home to nuthatches, and we were very pleased to see that nuthatches used it last Spring. We can always tell in advance if nuthatches have used a nest box because they block up all cracks with mud. Intriguingly they make a nest out of chips of birch bark which look like a bowl of bran flakes!

We next surveyed nest boxes 42 and 35 – one of our new Schwegler tit boxes – and then made our way southwards down to the Seven Arches, cleaning our next boxes on the way.

Our nest boxes are not used by birds only for nesting. After the breeding season, they will use nest boxes for roosting – as evidenced by the droppings in the nest material.

Other creatures will also use the nest boxes. A couple of years running we found a noctule bat in one particular nest box – and we very quickly put the nest box back up without disturbing it! Another nest box was originally intended as a tree creeper box but last year, as in others, it provided a roosting place for squirrels.

Many of the nest boxes are used by clothes moths after the breeding season. The larvae of the moths eat into the wood and use it to create a thick fibrous and rubbery cocoon in which they spend the winter.

We finished our surveying and cleaning at 2 pm. As usual, it was a very satisfying, if long, morning’s work.

The results of our survey

We currently have forty two nest boxes: thirty seven tit boxes, four robin boxes and one starling/tree creeper box. In the course of our survey, we unfortunately overlooked one robin box and one tit box so we surveyed forty in total.

The tree creeper/starling box

This box was originally intended as a box for tree creepers though we soon decided it might be better as a starling box. Treecreepers like to nest in the cracks behind the bark of trees. As can be seen from the photo, the box is very different from a tit box: it has a rectangular hole on the side, rather than a round hole on the front. It is also a lot deeper than a tit box, though this has not deterred tits from nesting in it! The hole you can see in the photograph was too big and in about 2013 we fixed a metal plate around the hole. Unfortunately, it is still too big and the box has been used several years by squirrels.

This year the box was used by a grey squirrel for roosting – evidenced by a layer of about 15 cm of dry leaf bedding.

The robin boxes

Robins are well known for finding unusual nest sites – usually low down and well concealed: flower pots, old boots, kettles, toolboxes, farm machinery, hats and coat pockets! They will use nest boxes but rather than a round entrance hole they will only use open-fronted next boxes as shown in the photo above. However, they have not used any of our nest boxes since we put them up in 2009! There are lots of robins in Adel Woods, so they can obviously find lots of suitable nest sites on their own.

Of the three robin boxes we surveyed this year, one was used by a great tit family for nesting, one was used by a grey squirrel for roosting, and one was unused.

Tit boxes

Of the thirty six tit boxes we surveyed, two were unused. Of the thirty four used, one was used by a family of nuthatches, and thirty three by tits. We were not surveying how many nests were used by blue tits and how many by great tits, but we believe that six were used by blue tits, and four by great tits. This is based on hole size of the nest (if the nest hole is 25mm, only blue tits can get through) and size of eggs.

Sadly, not all of the tit nests will have been successful. Two nest boxes contained six skeletons each, one contained three, and one contained one. Eleven nests contained unhatched eggs. Nine of these nests contained one or two unhatched eggs, but two contained five each. It is possible that some of the young fledged from these nests, but it is also possible that the parents were predated and the nests were unsuccessful.

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 and just come along to one of our work parties.

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 button at the bottom of this page.