Blackbirds 2025
Close to our back door is a Lonicera that has mingled with a Vinca and climbed our downpipe, last year a blackbird nested here successfully. This year she appeared using the same route, land on our garden table, hop onto a chair back then launch herself into the tangled shrubbery. The pair built a new nest and laid 5 eggs, she sat on them for a few days but we had builders come and noisily drilled many holes into our walls, she abandoned the nest. Sadly weeks later when we removed the eggs one showed signs of the egg hatching, happily the noise did not disturb the sparrows

Sparrows 2025
The north west facing end gable of our house was scheduled for an extensive repair in March, in April the men arrived to erect scaffolding and I hurriedly took down our Sparrow nest box and resited it on our adjacent boiler room wall. The sparrows had started to nest but hadn't laid. To my surprise within an hour of the scaffolders leaving the sparrows were back in the nest box. Bad news the builders arrived and repositioned the scaffolding and would you believe it laid a scaffold board on the nest box! The builders were absent for a few days on another job and we had three eggs. The sparrows totally ignored the builders and raised their little brood fledging them over the easter break when the builders were away but unfortunately the camera wasn't on to record the event.

 Blue Tits 2025
We noticed last year that Magpies and Rooks were taking a close interest in our Blue Tit box, it was getting old and the entrance hole was being nibbled and enlarged. I had a box that I'd had set down low for Robins, but in three years there had been no interest. So I fashioned a piece of wood and filled the front open space, I then drilled a 25mm hole I'd been told was the size for Blue Tits. Watching the nest box told a different tale, it was clearly too small a hole for them, they were chipping away at the hole, testing with their shoulders to see if they could fit.  At this rate they'd have no feathers by the time the nest was built. The smaller of the two continued fetching material for the nest, the larger chiseling aways at the hole. Then there was nothing. Two days elapsed without a sighting. So I decided to enlarge the hole slightly and rounded off the edges. Bingo the race is on albeit a little later than their contemporaries.