THERE'S ALWAYS ONE!

I did manage to have a lie-in this morning but when I came downstairs, Mr. HCB told me that the Great Tits that had been nesting in our blue nesting box had fledged and I felt quite sad to have missed this important event, especially as we had watched Mr. and Mrs. Great Tit going in and out of the box to feed their babies from early morning until night.

However, five minutes later, when Mr. HCB went upstairs, he shouted to me that there was another little face at the opening of the box.  I dashed to get my Canon camera as it has a 50x zoom and then positioned myself in the conservatory doorway, little knowing that it would take almost 45 minutes of high drama before the last little fledgling got away.

Master Great Tit (or of course, it could have been Miss!) came to the edge several times, and even looked as if it was about to fly, but then disappeared back into the depths of the box.  It did come to the opening and tweet a couple of times, but there was no sign or sound of either parent and they had been gone for quite a long time by then. 

After about half an hour, with the parents still nowhere in sight, this little one flew down onto the grass and pecked about for a couple of minutes.  Then it hopped onto the garden, where it was almost lost underneath the various plants and the parents still hadn’t come back.  I was getting quite worried by this time and although there had been some tweeting by the baby, it then hopped onto the path behind the flower bed and went along towards where the box was, probably looking for Mum or Dad.

I did see Mum or Dad come and look into the box, and it even went right in, but it then flew off, not having seen the baby inside or heard it near, because by this time it was much further along the border and well away from the box.  I guess that you might have thought this was Silly Saturday if you had heard us talking to this little fledgling, telling it to start tweeting so that its parents would hear and come back.  

Mr. HCB was worried that it couldn’t fly and was probably the weakest of the fledglings, so he went and got some seed to try and coax it out into the open so that he could catch it and put it up on one of the high walls.  However, it just hopped along the path and then into the depths of the back border again hidden by many of the plants.  We were concerned about just leaving it to its own devices, because it wasn’t calling to its parents and we hadn’t seen or heard the parents for sometime, because if next door’s cat came over the fence, then it would have been “curtains” for this baby.

Eventually, Mr. HCB managed to pick it up but after putting it on the wall, it flew back down into the garden, but not one to give up easily, he caught it again and put it further back on the wall.  We stood there for a few minutes and were delighted to see that it then flew up into the large sycamore tree, which is just outside our garden wall, hopefully to be reunited with its parents.

After all that high drama, I realised I hadn’t even drunk my coffee, which by now was stone cold, so we are now enjoying a hot cup of coffee and hoping that all is well with the Great Tit family, knowing that we have done our bit to help them.  

The fledgling looks quite large in this collage, but that’s because I zoomed in - Mr. HCB said it fitted into the palm of his hand and he also noticed that it was one of the rare occasions he had gone out into the garden without his hat - there was no time to grab it!

“There is no exercise better for the heart 
     than reaching down 
          and lifting people (or even birds) up.” 
John Holmes