Saturday 24 March 2012

Feathering their nest.


We put up a new bird box a week ago, taking advantage of the scaffolding currently around our house, and today there are sparrows nesting in it already. I was alerted to the birds by their wonderful chirpy calls and watched, the male?, bouncing around on the scaffolding next to the bird box before jumping onto the front to peer into the hole. This continued for about half an hour actively with him returning every minute or so, presumably with grubs and worms for his partner inside. There was another sparrow clearly watching which seemed to accompany him and I only got very fleeting glimpses of the bird inside the house. For all I know they have been settling in for a week and I've been at work and oblivious and it was only on Saturday that I noticed them as I was sitting in the 8-o-clock spring morning sunshine enjoying the chaffinches and blackbirds calling away. I didn't see him bring any nest materials and noticed that the activity tailed off later in the day but that he was busy again first thing on Sunday morning also. I had initially drilled a hole and poked a stick into the front of the bird house, as a perch, but this has gone and clearly isn't needed as the little sparrow effortlessly fluttered up to the front and grasped on with its feet or rested on the house roof before dropping over the front. I also observed that although it poked it's head into the house each time, it didn't ever actually go into the house ?


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