Quantock Hills Blog
Easter eggs
- Monitoring the pied flycatcher nest boxes begins
Posted by Andy Harris on 27 April 2011
Hopefully you all had a great Easter break, and enjoyed a few too many chocolate eggs. I’m hoping I might still find some Easter eggs, albeit the slightly smaller variety that can be found in our 160+ nest boxes scattered amongst the woods and forests.
Earlier in the year Jen, our full-time volunteer and I did a bit of spring cleaning and maintenance to the boxes in preparation for the occupants some of whom have travelled from sub Sahara in order to breed here before returning. Many of the smaller boxes will be used by species such as blue, great and coal tits but if we’re lucky some will be left for migrants such as pied flycatchers and redstarts.
Weighing about the same as a £2 coin the pied flycatcher arrives in our western sessile oak woods having flown from tropical West Africa. The males arrive before the females and begin to set up their territory so they’re ready to attract a mate as soon as they arrive. When the female has then chosen a suitable nesting territory it is she who makes the nest from grass, leaves and honeysuckle and lays on average seven pale blue eggs. It’s often thought that pied fly’s return to the same woods each year but we know from the ringing we do that one pied fly we rung in 2008 returned to a wood in Hereford the following year.
Anyway Jen and I have just started regular monitoring of the boxes as part of a regional study being co-ordinated by Dr Malcolm Burgess and over the next few weeks we will endeavour to keep you up to date on the fortunes the pied fly’s and our resident species using the nest boxes.
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