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Hi. Sorry if this isn't in the right place. I'm new and had problems working out how to post. A bird (I think bluetit) has made a beautiful moss nest in our wall mounted black metal letter box but I am worried that they will overheat and that maybe as there are as yet no eggs I should disturb it now to prevent the baby birds dying later. Last year or the year before (I cant remember) a bluetit made its nest there and we made sure noone disturbed them....after several months we risked opening it up as we thought they must have gone by now and the nest was all maggotty so I dont know if they died in there or if thats just how nests get once they're empty. Any advice would be very very gratefully received.
Thank you! I'm not sure we could fix a cover - last time we covered the top of the box with silver foil in an attempt to reflect the worst of it, but I did wonder about fixing a proper (wooden!) next box just near it and wondered if they'd transfer to that next year. I can't stand the stress of imagining hot baby birds for another year.... thank you for the legal tip although i hope it was obvious that i was doing my best to protect the birds including last year banning the use of the box for several months despite the problems that caused.
Yes I think we could definitely rig up some cardboard around it. My physics is very rusty - I'm assuming that wouldnt that just make it warmer (or else you wouldnt have suggested it, sorry its not my forte!). Thank you also for your info about other people having unsuccessful nests, I just immediately assumed it was the metal bit but maybe they didnt do well for other reasons, although to be honest there were no skeletons of anything by the time we opened it just a heaving clutch of maggots (we left it ages because we werent sure how long they took and didnt want to disturb) so they might have fledged for all I know but there were no broken eggs or evidence of bodies etc, but we'd seen the adult bird going in and out for weeks.
Not sure of the direction, but it is (unfortunately) sheltered from the wind and in the sun for most of the day. I've just looked at keeping metal sheds cool on google (wonders of internet) and it suggests the light coloured thing we tried with silver foil last year but also using sod (I presume like moss) as a good insulator to keep away the heat and I guess the bonus of that is on hot days we could give it a quick water spray which should help as well. We have loads of thick moss type stuff around so if it really warms up I might try that. Everything else is about ventilation and other than taping the flap open which we did last year there's not much I can do about that.
Thank you, and is it true that they come back and have more than one clutch in the same nest the same year (that's why we left it for so long last year..we weren't sure if they would come back again)
I hope you don't mind sharmck, but I've moved your thread to the Nestboxes section.