Male disappeared (1 Viewer)

Hi folks,

I have a camera nest box with blue tit(s) nesting. They have laid nine eggs and the female has incubated them practically single handed, we have seen less and less of the male. Not at all in last few days. Two chicks have hatched today and the female is feeding them and herself and incubating too. This probably can't continue.

Anyone think there is any chance of the male turning up and saving the day?
Mary

mary99 said:

Hi folks,

I have a camera nest box with blue tit(s) nesting. They have laid nine eggs and the female has incubated them practically single handed, we have seen less and less of the male. Not at all in last few days. Two chicks have hatched today and the female is feeding them and herself and incubating too. This probably can't continue.

Anyone think there is any chance of the male turning up and saving the day?
Mary

Click to expand...

Only the female incubates in Blue (and other) Tits. The male rarely comes into the box during laying and incubation, as he has no need to, and even the first few days after hatching requires little input from him. During incubation and the first few days after hatching, he will often bring food to the female, but she comes off the nest to collect it.

Male and female Blue Tits look virtually identical, so you wont be able to know if there are two unless you see them both together.

Also, Blue Tits sometimes breed in trios, of a male and two females. Usually, the male will feed only one nest, so even if the male is not coming this is quite normal (he may also have been killed). Females are fully able to rear a brood on their own (males are not, as they cannot incubate or keep the young warm), although if caterpillar food is short then many (or all) young might die in the nest. But it is also normal for Blue Tits to lose a few chicks, even in good years, and even to lose all of them in bad years. This year is probably a bad year, due to the silly weather. They tend to start dying off after around a week old, when food demands start getting very high.

Thank you for that reply and for a little hope. Two years ago our first camera nest box year we had six chicks raised successfully.The male came in to feed the female and seemed to be around a lot, with both feeding the chicks ever minute and a half or so when they got up a bit.

Last year the nest failed, the female went off and left the chicks for half days at a time, the male was not around.

This female has not left the nest for more than a few minutes in the last two weeks but again not much sign of the male. So maybe a fifty fifty chance? It is good to know that it is possible for her to raise them herself.

I understand that nests failing is part of the normal spectrum otherwise we'd be knee deep in blue tits but it is hard to watch (turned camera off last year).

In gardens, Blue Tits get fooled into thinking it is a good place to breed, as there is tons of artificial food for the adults. But the chicks specifically require huge numbers of caterpillars (even live mealworms are of limited value - too tough), and these are often very scarce in gardens because there is not enough native vegetation in the area, such as hawthorn and oak trees, on which native moths prosper. So gardens are good for keeping adult Blue Tits alive in the winter, but are quite poor habitats for breeding Blue Tits. There just isn't enough natural chick food. So many garden nestboxes are doomed to struggle every year, and there is not a lot that can be done.

The daddy has turned up...with food!!!!
Mary