Saturday 2 April 2011

SPRING IN THE GARDEN SATURDAY 2ND APRIL 2011





A superb, warm, Spring morning with hardly any breeze. It doesn't get much better than that. I think our Blue Tits were of the same mind as well because they spent a lot of time nest building in the camera box. I presume it's the female who does the building, I did see both birds in the box a couple of times but he was shooed back out pretty quickly by the female. The behaviour has been interesting to watch, one of the birds spent four or five nights roosting in the box when the nest was in the early stages of construction, but that seems to have stopped now. The picture below seems to be part of the building process, she brings some material in and then spreads her wings out, pushing the moss away and creating a depression in the remainder, where I presume the eggs will eventually be laid.

Other Spring news today is the first Orange Tip butterfly of the year for me in the garden this afternoon. It was a male on a mission and I had no chance of getting a picture. Also this afternoon at about 17.30 there were about fifteen Sand Martins hawking over the lake for a couple of minutes before continuing their journey north.









In the pond, the first of the frog tadpoles have hatched (is that the right word)? And there's been an explosion of Caddis fly larvae, they use a sort of self produced glue to attach all sorts of bits and pieces of vegetation, sand etc to form a protective case around themselves. They look quite bizarre as they shuffle across the surface and round the edges of the pond looking for food. When they increase in size they shed their case and make another bigger one, and once fully grown they seal the case and then transforms into a pupa which will eventually become an adult Caddis fly. Which will please the trout and consequently the trout fisherman.

4 comments:

Simon said...

Well done with the Orange-tip, I almost expected to see one today. A pair of Great Tits have been investigating my camera nestbox this week - finger crossed they'll nest!

Greenie said...

Phil ,
Well thats confirmed my suspicions , definitely a 'voyeur' !
We have put up a couple of cameras in nest boxes up on the Ridge for visitors , no takers yet .
Well done with the Orange Tip on testosterone .

ShySongbird said...

Looks like you are going to have lots of nest box entertainment Phil. Well done with the Orange Tip too.

I don't know what happened to the comment I know I wrote on your last post, I think I must have hit the preview button but not the post comment one. Unless of course your Croc ate it...!

Paul said...

Hi Phil, good luck with your camera nest box set up mate. I put a couple of nest boxes up in the garden for the first time this year, and although both Blue and Great Tit showed a lot of interest in them, it looks like neither will use them this year?