Live Stream of my Bird Box - Bluetits Nesting - Chicks Hatching Now

It's even worse now mate
But double check with some one else in case it's just a problem at my end
Would not want you trying to fix it if it's only me having an issue
 
mrbell1984 said:
You not got it live?
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It's live but you have to use an app to view it

Nazbit said:
12 years wow. How many successful nests in that time?
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Only had two failures. One where they built the nest too deep and a woodpecker took the chicks out of the nest hole and the other a woodpecker destroyed the box. Since then I've made a box to my own design and it's been good :)
 
Mcnumpty2323 said:
@Nazbit it seems to have improved now
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Thanks - I see what this was now. Behind the boxes are some tall bushes and trees. Late evening they cast a shadow towards the boxes which people may have seen on the external camera view. The problem is if it gets breezy at that exact time of night then those bushes start to move quite significantly and the camera feeds repeatedly go from very light to very dark really quickly and it seems the cameras can't keep up. I have this internally within my network as well so its the cameras themselves struggling rather than the stream to YouTube.

Hopefully it won't happen very often.
 
mrgubby said:
Only had two failures. One where they built the nest too deep and a woodpecker took the chicks out of the nest hole and the other a woodpecker destroyed the box. Since then I've made a box to my own design and it's been good :)
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Yeah thats really good. I've had the box up since last Feb - which I knew was too late for last years breeding season - it was just when I had the time to set it all up because I was doing CCTV for my house.

So this is our first year with any occupants but learning ideas for improvement all the time. Your design looks very good for the camera angle.

Have you reinforced against woodpeckers now? I'm not aware that they're around here but I've got a metal narrowing plate on it to prevent them widening the holes or larger birds reaching in. How powerful are they? could they just go through the side if they wanted to or do they need an existing hole to widen?

Last year I saw a couple of sparrow fledglings carried away by a sparrow hawk which was sad but that's nature I suppose!
 
Still coming in to sleep every night. She is spending most of the daylight hours outside now

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The nest has remained largely static over the past two days.

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I think we should hopefully see her build a cup in the middle before she starts laying eggs.
 
Nazbit said:
Have you reinforced against woodpeckers now? I'm not aware that they're around here but I've got a metal narrowing plate on it to prevent them widening the holes or larger birds reaching in. How powerful are they? could they just go through the side if they wanted to or do they need an existing hole to widen?
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The box that we had problems was a shop bought one made out of cheap and nasty wood, the only reason I'd used it was it came with a better camera than our existing box.

The box that I'm using now is the one I built originally out of 1/2 inch thick fence gravel board, nothing has ever been able to get through it :D

I've also got a camera outside the box, this was a wren getting a bit inquisitive ;)

www.pitblado.org/example/wren_out.mp4
 
Nazbit said:
Thanks - I see what this was now. Behind the boxes are some tall bushes and trees. Late evening they cast a shadow towards the boxes which people may have seen on the external camera view. The problem is if it gets breezy at that exact time of night then those bushes start to move quite significantly and the camera feeds repeatedly go from very light to very dark really quickly and it seems the cameras can't keep up. I have this internally within my network as well so its the cameras themselves struggling rather than the stream to YouTube.

Hopefully it won't happen very often.
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Think you are right on the mark
That's exactly what was happening thinking back on it
 
We have our first egg!!

Looks like she laid it around 6am but she very quickly burried it and it wasn't visible again until she came in the the evening and uncovered it around 7.30pm to rotate it.

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Hopefully now she will lay one egg per day at dawn. Apparently the average is 8 - 12 eggs. 16 is the absolute max. A lot of work for a bird weighing 10 grams!

Only once she is ready to lay her final egg will she start incubating full time. Until then she will spend most of the day outside of the box calling back occasionally to check on the eggs and rotate them.
 
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Interestingly although she displayed egg laying behavior between 05.45 and 06.00 she does not appear to have laid a third egg today. Unless she was able to bury it without us seeing.

She also came back to the box a few times within the first hour or two of leaving for the day which has not been the pattern over the last few days.
 
Morning

So another strange one today. Yesterday obviously we expected her third egg and she displayed egg laying behavior but didn't lay anything.

Today she didn't display any egg laying behavior at all and left the nest about 30 mins earlier than normal. She is coming back periodically to rotate and cover the eggs.

So I'm not sure whats going on really. All of the info I can find seems to suggest one egg per day more or less like clockwork for a week or so averaging 7 - 12 eggs.

:confused:

I assume she doesn't think shes done at two eggs as she hasn't started to incubate them.
 
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