So, today has been our annual 'Springwatch Discovery Day' one of the many fun and exciting events that we hold here on the reserve. Todays activities included pond dipping, bug hunting, a tree challenge, a scavenger hunt, wildlife challenge and bird bingo! Phew! And it has been nice and busy, lots of happy customers and lots of great discoveries including azure and large red damselflies, garden chafer beetles, another giant caddisfly larva and two as yet unidentified caterpillars, which i'm hoping the excellent members of the Scottish Moths forum will be able to help me with.
For those of you wanting to have an update on our two nestboxes (apologies for the delay), the blue tits have now fledged, 5 out of 8 were succesful with three being left behind. We're not sure what happened, but in previous years all of the birds have left at once. This year, five left and three remained in the box for a few days. The parents appeared to still be feeding them but i suspect eventually they chose to look after the fit and healthy family that had already left the nest and had to leave behind those that hadn't developed quickly enough. Eventually, it seems, the adults stopped feeding them and the three remaining chicks died, sadly.
For the great tits, a similar story. All five chicks appeared to be doing fine, but we arrived to the reserve one morning to find that one had unfortunately died during the night. Shortly after, two more faced the same fate, leaving just two healthy, lively birds behind. The remaining two appear to be doing fine, the parents are still regularly feeding them and they have started flapping their wings in preparation for their first big flight.
Although sad, the reason that blue tits and great tits have such large broods is because it gives them a better chance that some of them will survive to adulthood. The harsh winter ahead will not be kind to slow developers and, indeed, many of our garden birds do not make it past their first winter. Survival of the fittest helps to keep a strong and healthy population of a species and well as a strong gene pool.
For those that did make it, we wish you the best of luck over the months to come, and maybe one day, those same birds will return to use our camera nestbox.
Paula