It’s National Nest Box Week and love is in the air. I’ve spotted courting dunnocks and blackbirds, and two robins companionably feeding side by side at the bird table. Our resident duo of collared doves are constantly canoodling, billing and cooing to reinforce their bond, while male wood pigeons are strutting around like regency gentlemen, pecking the females’ rumps, then bowing deeply as their prospective partners flounce around to face them.
Blue tits are already investigating inviting hollows in their search for a safe nest site. One pair has spent the past fortnight popping in and out of a nest box attached to the wall beneath my bedroom window. It can often be tricky to differentiate between the sexes, but as they perch together in the crown of the silver birch, there’s no mistaking the male. His plumage has significantly more colour saturation – the cerulean blue cap and chartreuse flanks glowing in the soft morning light. He also sports a wider and more pronounced black neckband marking.
Last year, the box was inhabited within days of us putting it up, and when the eggs hatched, the begging calls of the chicks became the soundtrack of spring. If they are successful in raising a brood, it’s common for blue tits to rebuild at the same site the following year, though they have short lifespans – on average just three years – so it’s impossible to know whether these are returning residents.
When I cleaned out the box at the end of the breeding season, I found that the nest was a plump mattress constructed almost entirely from my maine coon cat’s cashmere-soft fur (I don’t treat my cats with topical antiparasitics, which can be toxic to birds). Nest-building is a solely female endeavour, and I’ve already spotted the female of this pair tugging wisps from the bundle of fur I’ve stuffed into an old suet ball feeder, while the male sings from a nearby bough or skirmishes with rival suitors.
It’s not unusual for blue tits to spend up to two weeks prospecting a site, so like any anxious vendor, I’m hoping that these house hunters have decided that it’s the perfect family abode and the metaphorical sold sign will be going up any day now.
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