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What's going on? (1 Viewer)

david2004

Well-known member
I have been seeing a lot of nestbox activity recently, especially Blue Tits. I put up some more hole nestboxes and they were being checked out a lot. They are very good quality ones too. They are now being ignored and a smaller, not so good box is getting all the attention!

Also, Blue Tits have been nesting in our House Martin nest cups. They are now very rarely checking out the nesting sites and more interested in a slit in the tiles on the side of our house! - in full sun!


Does anyone know why they are favouring worse quality potential nesting sites to good nestboxes sited in appropriate areas? Is there anything I can do?
 
Short of sitting them down and asking for an explanation,no i don 't.....but joking apart they're very curious birds and will probably investigate all manner of accommodation until they find something that suits.
Are the nestbox holes under 30mm ?? Maybe if they're too big,they'd rather not risk settling in and then having having the larger birds take over.
 
no idea why they favour some sites/boxes over others, last year I put up a new home made box in the orchard at work, the old one was falling apart, hanging at an odd angle and looked likely to fall down at an moment, guess which one they nested in ;)

also put up an open fronted box for Spotted Flyctachers, they nested a few feet away in dead Ivy that was falling off the wall. At another place where I had seen them I put up a box and they were straight in it.

really dont think there's anything you can do, some of my boxes were empty for years before being used.
 
Blue Tits can be very fickel birds. Three years in a row they used one box then switched to the other one which was the same, for the first time . Its still got me thinking why..
 
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