Monday 12 December 2016

Blue tit argument...

The bird box has been recently used as an overnight roost for a blue tit.  On a couple of occasions we've had two in there.  Today was a little different since tit 1 didn't appreciate tit 2 in the same space, as can be seen in the following clip:



It's interesting that in addition to feet and beaks being used as offensive weapons, there are a couple of hooks using a wing...

Right hook


The posturing at the beginning is also interesting:

Posturing

Reminded me a bit of this



2 comments:

  1. Great video! (sorry, I've only just noticed this post). It looks like you may have better luck with this coming season if the males are already fighting over access to your bird box.

    Have you see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSFZ4MJhTmQ
    The real action starts about 14 minutes into the video. I guess it is the female bluetit that is caught by the great tit. Don't understand why the male did not come to her rescue.

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  2. We've had one roosting over night for about two weeks. Today I noticed that there are at least two individual blue tits due to different amounts of white above the beak. Have been generating lots of entrance counter data, just need to have a chance to look at it. Should be able to distinguish the difference between head bobbing in/out vs a simple count of entry/exit, as he/she seems to spend quite a lot of time peering out.
    Mk2 is in progress, hope to be done in a few weeks, with IR cam and IR cut. I like the idea of an external cam to, maybe next yr for Mk3...?

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