With daffodils emerging and snowdrops appearing everywhere, we can only assume spring is in the air.
I know it was a bit cold last night, but frosts can be expected until April at least.
So my Blue Tit blog is starting again with an added extra - a bird box camera. My partner Sarah bought me the camera system for Christmas but it's taken me a while to have the time to set it up.
Only thing I'm now waiting for is the extension lead to fit the camera to the bird box that has been occupied since I put it up in January 2008.
In 2008 and 2009 a pair of blue tits brought up five and six youngsters respectively, whether it was the same pair I just don't know.
In 2010 the blue tits were usurped by the great tits, who brought up six chicks. The blue tits moved next door to a cavity in the wall left by an outlet pipe.
One amazing evening with golden sunlight lighting the garden, both sets of chicks started to fledge within minutes of me arriving home from work. Three hours later I'd watched them fledge, find their wings in the nearby trees and fly off with their parents.
I have four nest boxes now in the garden, and in 2010 a pair of robins nested in the open-fronted box hidden in the honeysuckle. Will they come back this year? I hope so.
I've kept the birds with food during the winter and now have the usual suspects of blue, great and long tailed tits, robins, blackbirds, dunnocks, tree sparrows, chaffinches and goldfinches along with the now regular jays and great spotted woodpeckers. The wrens are still around, but more irregular.
I'm checking the nestboxes for roosting activity next weekend, then clearing anything out ready for the 2011 spring and summer residents. Fingers crossed they arrive!
