As forecast the weather today has been a lot better with a high of 10.5°C.

A mixture of sunshine and cloud with some windy periods produced a surprise day around the box with almost constant activity around lunchtime.

Until now, it has appeared that only single birds (presumably males) have been visiting. Today everything changed, and a female was also caught on camera.

It all started at 11.05am when what turned out to be a male obviously had the intention of showing the 'des res' to his mate.

He spent the next 50 minutes continuously in and around the box, popping back and forth fully investigating matters:

The next 10 minutes were spent with short periods of time on the outside of the box alongside flying sorties between the camera mount and the box:

By 11.50am he seemed to getting a little worked up about the whole affair and started pecking quite hard at the hole, along with a few more abortive entry attempts.

He scrabbled away at times, but just didn't seem to quite make the final push to go through the hole:

Six minutes later and it just had to happen, with a good foot hold, in he went:

Seconds later and another bird appeared from the top of the screen. Clearly being his mate she spent about 1.5 minutes peering in and looking around before flying off again:

So what was the male doing inside all this time?

After entering the box, he just stood there and seemed to wait for signs that his mate would come to the box. Once she did, he adopted the usual submissive crouching stance where he will stay still, hoping she will enter.

Throughout the whole episode the two of them were constantly chirping and communicating with each other.

After his mate had decided that she had seen enough the male reacted quite dramatically to her departure!

He launched himself up in the air, landed on the floor, moved up to the hole, landed by the glass wall and quickly left:

You can see the male trying to entice the female inside and his reaction to her departure here.

Twenty seconds after his exit the male returned, looking around for his mate and bobbing in and out of the hole once again:

In the hour that had just passed there were 36 visits to the box, some of them lasting anything up to 4 or 5 minutes.

The next hour saw another 26 visits with the male continuing his routine of hanging on the hole, looking around and darting to and from the box and the nearby hedge.

His mate was obviously in the vicinity at times, and pecks and chirps of enticement were made, but she never came close again.

Between 2.00pm and 3.00pm there were another four such visits.

A video of the male pecking and chirping is here.

All was quiet until 4.52pm when another 3 quick visits were made. A slightly surprising time of day to come and have a look, as most of the birds are beginning to think of settling down for the night.

... was he thinking of possibly roosting in the box for night ?

A great turn of events and what a difference a day can make ... with 69 visits to the box and the single entry, the first time a bird has ventured through the hole for 39 days. The most visits recorded up until now was 7, back on the 31st January.

The weather looks set to get a bit more unsettled again over the coming days with rain and possibly some high winds.

So we wonder, will the pair still return to carry on their pre-nesting routines ?