With valuable help on different occasions from Chris, Jan, Jenni, Simon and Zdena, I completed this year’s round of nest box inspections. 2022 was the best year to date since we began the exercise in 2013, and 2023 has been comparable, helped perhaps by dry conditions once chicks were starting to hatch in mid-May. Of our 31 inspectable boxes (including 3 new boxes installed last winter), 14 were used and all produced fledgelings: 9 Blue Tit nests averaging 8 fledgelings per nest and 5 Great Tit nests averaging 4 fledgelings. All observations have been entered into the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) Nest Record Scheme database.
Once again the northern end of the site did well. Although there were only 9 boxes there (all installed during the last two winters), 6 of these were used (compared with 8 out of 22 boxes in the central and southern areas). This again suggests a possible shortage of natural sites at the northern end.
It was also apparent that nest building started quite early (most of the boxes already had complete nests and some even had first eggs on the first visit on 20th April), yet it seems that laying or incubation was delayed in most cases until the latter half of May, probably waiting for better conditions.
John Elwell
Thanks to Chris Ritzmann for photo at the top
