Thursday, 24 May 2012

'Please Check You Have All Your Belongings.'

I’ve mentioned before that I have a nest box at the back of my house, close to the kitchen window. The blue tits raise a brood there every year, so from about late March to late May I see the adults going back and forth, first with nesting material and then food. Eventually there comes a time when I realise that I haven’t seen them for a couple of days, so I assume the young birds have fledged and that’s it for another year.

Yesterday, one of the adults did something unusual. He flew from the hedge to the box, and then perched on the entrance poking his head in and looking around – for a full ten minutes. He came back a while later and did the same thing again.

Since then I haven’t seen them bring any food, so I assume the chicks have flown the nest. So what was this adult doing? Had he been away on a long trip and didn’t know the kids had gone, or was he checking to see whether he’d left anything behind?

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