I put up a robin box about a month ago now, and today have spotted a pair avidly nest building. Very excited, as they're the first I know to be nesting in the garden.
I cleaned out the first four boxes today. It's always exciting to see what has been using them and how well the season went. Only two had nests this time which is decent enough given how closely spaced they are. The blue tit nest had one unhatched egg left over, which is very common, but the great tit nest had two young chicks hidden under several layers of material and one older chick dead on top. There was a lot of cheeping coming from that box this year right up to fledging so I guess they had a small early brood that failed then rebuilt the nest and had another on top which was partly successful. I can't see that the older chick was stuck and it looked old enough to fledge so I don't know why it was left behind. It does happen now and then though.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
-I have two swift boxes up need the roof. The maker said I didn't have to worry about getting long ladders to go and clear them out. Is that so?
-"I invariably have to evict some tenants and it's only fair to give them time to find new homes." What tenants do/did you find in Nov? I'm fascinated.
-I'm also wondering about bee boxes. I have three boxes (including the German one you have, WE). When do they need cleaning? I am hestitant.
I find all kinds of squatters while cleaning the boxes but mostly it's just insects and spiders. They all need to be evicted while it's being cleaned. I also get a few wood mice every year and the odd dormouse. The dormice go undisturbed due to legal protection (not that I'd disturb them even if they weren't) but the wood mice get evicted even though they're likely to go back in later anyway. I've found the odd roosting bird too if I leave cleaning too late in the day so I make sure I'm done well before dusk now.
I don't know about swift boxes sorry. I imagine they're fine without cleaning but I prefer to clean all of mine. I think the swift boxes are easier for the birds to clean as the hole is at the bottom though.
For bee boxes I'm working on a system of removing the full tubes and keeping them under cover for the winter so they get replaced after use which keeps it all pretty clean. I've no idea what to do with the brick bit though.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
I have sparrow terraces high under the roof, and there’s no way to get to them now (its a 3 story house and we got the roofers to put them up when the roof was redone). I’m now worried I am a slum landlord and my tenants are living in squalid conditions!
Others I clean out when I think a brood has failed. But generally don’t you worry that you will put the wildlife off by touching and washing? A couple of boxes took a while for birds to use them and if I took them down to clean would that put them off again?
Sparrows are pretty industrious when it comes to cleaning out their own nest boxes to be fair and they have several broods in a year so it's worth their while getting it cleaned out the first time around. They're strong enough to eject the dead chicks and rip apart old nests if they want to but they might just go elsewhere if it's too much work and there's other option available. Tits and other small birds though have their work cut out just filling a nest box so starting with a clean slate really helps them. You wouldn't believe the volume of material that came out of the great tit box yesterday. Once it was pulled apart and fluffed up you could have stuffed a pillow with it. I've got one big nest box at my parents' place that is meant for larger birds but the great tits insist on using it every year and it must take them weeks to make a nest big enough to fit it.
Cleaning the boxes doesn't put the birds off nesting though and I don't use chemicals so there's no smell left. I've put brand new boxes up and they've been taken within days so it's usually other factors that might put them off.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
I hang up big balls of my dog’s hair after brushing him. We put them near the boxes and it makes us smile to see tiny tits carrying HUGE balls of fur.... when we mended some leaks in our barn we had to remove as few furry nests, looked warm and cosy.
Because the weather has been terrible so far this winter I'm still working through cleaning the boxes out. I managed to get a group of 6 done today though. 2 were empty including one of my most productive boxes which was empty for the first time this year but 4 had nests of varying success so it's not all bad news. I wonder if the cold spring had an impact? Still the nuthatch returned and used the same nest box again which is great to see. One box though was unusually heavy and made an odd noise when I moved it. Turns out someone had cached 156 acorns inside there. The box is 3m up a tree hung from a branch and they were all large acorns so it must have been a huge effort for whatever did it. I'd love to have had a camera on that one but no such luck. Some of the acorns were a bit mouldy so I cleaned them off as well and returned all the good ones back to the box. I kept all the ones that had sprouted roots and will pot them up to plant out in the same woods in a couple of years.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
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Others I clean out when I think a brood has failed. But generally don’t you worry that you will put the wildlife off by touching and washing? A couple of boxes took a while for birds to use them and if I took them down to clean would that put them off again?
But what I do clean regularly are the feeders.