Something Strange With The Bird Houses This Year

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am now going to give a short talk about the birds and the bees.

You may remember I did a post last year about the bird houses I made for my garden, and my general observations about our feathered friends nesting there and sizes of access holes for each species. I posted it in July and it was titled, He Flew The Nest Too Soon.

I made the nesting box shown in the first photograph for a common variety of bird here in England called a Blue Tit. This variety is quite small but also very aggressive and very territorial. It's larger cousin and equally aggressive, The Great Tit, is about half as large again, and will not tolerate Blue Tits in their territory, so they chase them away - I've seen it - the brutes!" In Spring we might have had Blue Tits nesting in the first photo, they were all ready to move in but, as you can see, some other inhabitants beat them to it, the squatters! In fact the Blue Tits were beaten off earlier by a pair of Great Tits, now nesting in another box, as you will see.

Cor Blimey! That queen bee must have had a few too many! Fancy building a hive in my Blue Tit bird box! Surely it is much too small. But here they are. Come and have a look, honey!

The poor little Blue Tits stood no chance, as Elvis sang they might have been 'stung by a sweet honey bee', although these are small bumble bees, not honey bees . . . but just look at all the honey oozing from inside. It makes my mouth water but I am not going to make a 'beeline' for it just yet and if I did I would have to take the back off the box to get the honey. The weather has been very hot during the last week and when I walk past the box/hive I can hear the buzz of lots of wings inside cooling the developing bee grubs so they do not get too hot and die. I will wait until the end of the year to see if I can retrieve some honey when all the workers (females) are dead and all the drones (males) and the queen take to their nuptial flight. The poor winning drone seeking her affection has to be the strongest and flies the highest with her before he captures her heart and is promptly rewarded by her ripping off his marital prospects and discarding the rest of him as he falls from the sky. Boy! I'm glad I'm not a drone bee!

So where are the Great Tits?
I've been busy with my camera. Got ya!! Nice little bird isn't he/she!

I was watching the pair for a while and they seemed to be having difficulty for that part of the day finding nice tasty protein bugs and caterpillars for their chicks. So I dug up some Earth Worms and put them on a plate. They were watching me as I retreated. And the greedy blighters swooped down and took them one by one to their chicks in their nest. Want to see? OK.

"Thank you. Mummy! - more! more!"


"Alright, alright! I'm off but watch your table manners while I'm away!"

The birds moved so fast it was quite difficult shooting stills. It is a pity my video recorder is not working - I might buy another soon.
I am reminded by all this bird talk of an event many years ago when my family were in Dartmoor, Cornwall. We pulled into a beautiful picnic area and several people were feeding bread to the birds. If memory serves me correctly I think they were Wag Tails. I remember seeing a very skinny bird that never seemed to be able to get to the bread before being buzzed by the stronger birds. So I placed a piece of bread on my reversed palm and held it out to the bird, some 20 feet away. Much to my amazement it flew straight to me and took the bread from my hand. It must have been ravenous to overcome natural fear, but it might have realised I meant it no harm. My daughter was upset that she could not get a bird to feed off her hand. Never mind, Eddie always has a way with the birds LOL.
You see how kind and gallant I am, even to the birds.