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Saturday 17 April 2010

No progress but visits only

Nothing much has happened in terms of nest building. The Great Tit pair visits and much calling is made from inside and outside of nesting box #2. We shall see if this leads anywhere.

In the meantime, I was surfing the web for interesting fact and found this abstract...

"Studies of the dawn chorus in birds have focused mainly on the behavior and song output of males and on the function(s) of male song. Less attention has been paid to the females' behavior and to communication between members of a pair. In Great Tits (Parus major), males sing vigorously at dawn in the vicinity of the female's nest hole just before and during egg laying. We studied the female's vocal behavior during the dawn chorus as well as communication between pair members. All females vocally interacted with their mates from inside the nest box. Females produced a sound with a very low sound-pressure level only audible from few meters, which we have named the “quiet call.” This quiet call was unique to females and was only produced from inside the nest box. To our knowledge, our study is the first to show that both members of a pair vocally interact during the dawn chorus. Given that many temperate-zone bird species have similar life histories as the Great Tit, it is very likely that similar interactive behavior occurs in other (song)birds. This interactive behavior may provide a new and manipulable tool for testing hypotheses about the dawn song and can be used as a future bioassay of male vocalizations."

(http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1642/0004-8038(2004)121%5B0184%3AICBMAF%5D2.0.CO%3B2?cookieSet=1&journalCode=tauk)

Thursday 15 April 2010

Oh well....

Today I am depressed. Nothing new has happened. The pair of Great Tits is still interested in the nesting box, visiting every day, but no progress has been really made. An occasional sparrow is seen, but that is also about it.

I have noticed that most other observers have reported at least one egg...which makes my positive hopes sink to become negative ones....

The only thing one can say, is that the weather has been really bad. It rained all day yesterday and on top of that is was cold. Today the sky is covered, but at least it has not yet rained.

http://www.yr.no/place/Germany/Baden-Württemberg/Widdern,_Stadt/long.html

...apparently it is going to improve.......hopes are the last to die, so maybe, just maybe something might have happened in the nesting boxes today....

Tuesday 13 April 2010

Nesting Off and On...

While nothing has happened in nesting box #1, nesting box #2 has seen increased activity....(sound is back!)



The weather is still not very pleasant, but it should get better tomorrow... expectations are... great... which, as Dickens pointed out, might not be such a good thing.

...I thought I might post a picture unrelated to my little project but related to nesting....



The church facade in Schöntal was home to at least 10 such nests!

Monday 12 April 2010

Nesting Has Begun in Box #2???

I am happy to announce that the Great Tit Pair made their first contribution to the nest in box #2 on Saturday, as the video below shows (unfortunately without sound for some reason...).



Nothing happened on Sunday (I must admitt though that I did get up late and that the birds did visit before...but not after...I started recording...deduction made from the fact that the last recorded image of Saturday and the first of Sunday are different).

The weather was grim to say the least and it is cold again (4 miserable degrees this morning and rainy), so I wonder if nest building will continue or not.

On Sunday a solitary Sparrow visited nesting box #1 serveral times but that was about it.

At any rate, observing these little creatures is relaxing and fills me with awe :-).