A SAD END TO THE NESTBOX BREEDING SEASON

A week of mixed emotions for the wildlife in my garden, with nature showing its cruel and kind sides.

The house sparrow family in the new triple nestbox successfully fledged earlier this week, after much encouragement from the adults.

I don’t know the exact number of chicks but it was at least three, possibly four, so a good level of fledglings from the nest.

The pleasing thing is this nestbox was only put up in March, so it shows the poor weather in early spring must have delayed the nesting instincts and hence why the box looked so good once those instincts kicked in again.

The cruel side of nature showed itself on my camera nestbox, as the third brood of the year failed.

It had two house sparrow eggs, not three as previously thought, and one hatched on the same day the other house sparrows fledged from the other nest.

The chick was being fed and brooded by the female as she tried to hatch the other egg. After just three days of life I saw the chick wasn’t moving yesterday morning (see below image) and wondered if it was just resting.

 

My fears increased when I couldn’t see or hear the parent birds and by the evening I realised the chick had died and the other egg had failed.

I could see flies on the chick so decided to remove the nest from the nestbox and clear it out. The fascinating thing was seeing how the house sparrow nest was built on top of the blue tit nest, but just looked like it was one nest.

 

 

 

 

The camera nestbox is now empty and it’s sad to see after such a good spring and summer for breeding.

 

Overall I’m pleased that two birds have used it for the first time in the same year and they both managed to fledge youngsters.

Speaking of which there has been lots of young blue and great tits visiting the garden in the last few days. I’m hoping some will have been raised in the camera nestbox, and that their parents, or even one of them, will return to it next spring and raise another generation of tits.