Welcome to the site for the 2007 season.

We had hoped to start a little in earlier in the month, but the new box for this year took a little longer than anticipated to complete.

The weather in the UK has been quite mild during January, but we've all had an awful lot of wind and rain. Some of the dryer days have been quite nice, and when the sun has made an all too infrequent break through the clouds, all the birds in the garden seem in a very Spring like mood.

Many species have been quite active, not only on the feeders, and male Blue Tit calls could be heard coming from far and wide. If you didn't know better, it could easily have been the middle of March!

A few days ago we took the time to mooch around the garden and see what might be going on. We saw one pair of Blue Tits looking very interested in a couple of the boxes located on some of the trees at the front of the house.

They spent about 10 minutes going to and from two of the boxes, darting in and out - so for them, house hunting was very much on the agenda!

It's the male which will seek out and locate what he thinks will be a suitable home, trying to entice the female inside. We did see one bird pop inside a box, stay in there for about two minutes and then come out. Whilst he was inside, a female pitched up to the hole and briefly took a look inside, and then moved some feet away thinking about things. Once he had left, she again flew up to the hole and popped inside.

Great to see, but a little unusual at this time of year.

Needless to say, but the following day the weather returned to wind and driving rain, spoiling the Spring like activity and it was back to normal in the bird world.

So, with all of that interest in other parts of the garden, we hope that the new bird box will also see some early interest and ultimately become a temporary home for a pair of nesting Blue Tits.

The new box put up today

The bird box this year contains 3 cameras, 3 microphones and 3 light sources. One of the lights is an infra red light, so we can all see what goes on at night.

A first for Nest Watch is the inclusion of a glass wall. Two of the cameras point through this, and should allow some different views to those that we have shown previously. The uppermost one is fixed, and has been focused onto where (hopefully) the nest cup will be made. The other is at eye level and movable. It will be raised higher if a nest is built.

The third camera points directly down into the potential nest area and gives the traditional 'helicopter' view of the box.

We did try a glass wall a few years back, alongside the box we covered in 2005, but it wasn't very successful. It looked like the birds were wary of reflections they could see in the glass.

Anyway, undeterred, we have decided to give it another go - so if we don't get any nesting birds, we're sorry, but we had to try!

One inherent problem is also the fact that the glass may become dirty over time. This may hamper image quality, but we'll see how it goes.

If you want to know more about the box, how it was made, and what has been put in there, please visit the Technical page.

The WebCam has been set-up (inside only). We've still yet to install the outside camera (all the cabling is in place), but we are awaiting a replacement after it decided to play-up and only display in black and white!

So ... not a lot more we can say at present, but keep fingers crossed ...

Thanks for stopping by, and we'll update the site again when we have more news.

Happy New Year to you all!