For the past three years, blue tits have nested in a box on the wall beneath my bedroom window, and we’ve become curtain-twitchers, peering covertly out to watch the adults come and go and listen to the peeping chicks. But what goes on inside the cavity? Curiosity piqued, we installed a new box with a solar-powered camera over the winter. On 19 March, a female blue tit staked her claim, roosting in the box overnight. Nest building commenced early the following morning. I’d assumed she would pick up fallen twigs to form a framework. Instead, she snapped off thin, flexible side shoots from the Clematis montana which smothers our fence. Each piece was repositioned several times before she prostrated herself, wings splayed for balance, and spun around, pedalling her legs to press the material into place. Over the next 11 days, she worked steadily from dawn to dusk, building up the walls and creating a depression towards the back of the box. Each night she spent up to 10 minutes pecking the wooden walls before settling down to sleep, her head nuzzled into the fluffed-up plumage on her back. Was she announcing her occupancy, assessing the security of the nest site, or was it perhaps part of a pair-bonding ritual? On 30 March, she began overlaying the woven stems with moss. Then three days later she started bringing in tufts of my Maine Coon’s shed winter undercoat, which she needle-felted with her pointed bill to create a soft lined cup. The nest pad soon grew to a depth of around three or four inches, the layers of moss and cat fur giving it the bounce of a well-sprung mattress. During the past 48 hours, visits to the box have slowed. This morning she brought in five downy wood pigeon feathers, plucked from the remains of a carcass abandoned by the fox in front of my neighbour’s house, then disappeared until dusk. For the first time in over a week, she has chosen to roost in the box, but she seems restless, fidgeting and pecking at the nest cup. Blue tits typically lay one egg a day, usually first thing in the morning. So now we wait. • Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
Author: Claire Stares