Hatching time

The recent cold and wet weather has caused a much increased food consumption from the feeders in the garden. There have also been a number of Great Tits (kjøttmeis) feeding which I took as meaning that they hadn’t come very far with egg laying and breeding. I was therefore surprised to see an adult entering one of the nest boxes with such frequency that he had to be delivering food. I put the camera in the box this morning and it revealed an adult brooding three featherless youngsters. I then checked the other nest box and was surprised to see it was completely empty. Both boxes had been receiving attention earlier in the spring from both Blue and Great Tits and although I had not seen nesting material being taken into either I was sure there would be nests in both. However, only one occupied nest box seems to be the norm in our garden – the boxes are probably too close to each other.

Feeding time. The young are probably just a day old and are featherless and their eyes haven't opened. There are only three which is very small brood. I don't know whether there are unhatched eggs or whether only three were laid which might be the female matching the number of eggs to what she assesses the food resources to sustain?

I was able to persuade my oldest daughter to join me on a trip to Svellet in the middle of the day and despite it being sunny the viewing conditions were good (no heat haze which I had feared). Two days without rain has caused a number of waders to move on but the water level is still falling slowly so conditions are good and more rain forecast for next week could produce a real increase in numbers again. 400 Greenshank was still pretty impressive although down from the whopping 960 reported yesterday evening) and amongst them were 11 Bar-tailed Godwits, 12 Ruff, 44 Redshank, 80 Wood Sandpipers, 4 Ringed Plover, 2 Dunlin, 6 Common Sandpipers, 5 Oystercatchers and 2 Spotted Redshank. There is clearly movement of waders during the day though as another observer reported only 3 Redshank today but 610 Greenshank and 100 Wood Sandpipers.