Empty nest syndrome – our blue-tits have fledged


This morning I spent a long while trying to get my camera to talk to my smartphone. Eventually I succeeded, but the nest was ominously quiet. R said he had seen the parents being active earlier, so I wondered if perhaps they had been very active early morning and were just taking a short break?

After an hour of no activity, I finally disconnected my phone. And typically one parent showed up with a bright green caterpillar in it’s mouth! Frantically I grabbed the camera and started shooting.

Blue-tits feeding young in nest-box

The adult soon disappeared and didn’t return again. After a good while, I had to go out and when I returned the nest was completely quiet.

And stayed quiet all afternoon until late in the evening, when I spotted one of the parents sat high up in the top branches of the apple tree. It looks like the female as she had some feathers missing on her chest – this would be the “brood patch” which the females create by plucking out feathers when they are about to incubate their eggs. Apparently this is to allow their body warmth to transfer more efficiently to the eggs.

Female adult blue-tit enjoying some “chill” time at the top of the nesting tree on the day after the chicks fledge from the nest box.

She was very chilled and relaxed – I’ve not seen either parent spend any time just sat in one place, let alone so high up in the tree before. But she seemed to be just content to relax and look around at her surroundings from a fabulous vantage point before flying away. No attempt to enter the nest box, and no sounds from the box at all now. I think our chicks may have fledged early this morning, and perhaps this morning’s feed I eventually saw was an attempt at coaxing out a laggard from the nest-box?

For more images of our blue-tits at the nest-box, either see them here or in the gallery below: