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Hi there! I hope someone can help a nestbox newbie!
We have great tits nesting in a newly erected box with camera. They built the nest over Easter and laid 8 eggs in the centre of the moss but on the wooden base of the box.. Mum has been sitting on them and is now largely fed by Dad. She has always spent some time scrabbling around arranging the eggs beneath her but in the last couple of days 5 of them have rolled underneath the nesting material. She doesn't seem able or interested in getting them back into the clutch beneath her. Will they be warm enough to incubate properly? It's very difficult to resist putting them back when she pops out but I'm sure any interference will almost certainly cause them to desert the nest.
Any suggestions or reassurance welcome!
Hello this to is my first year with a nestcam so i'm learning to, what I can tell you is about chickens and ducks, if the mother feels the egg for some reason isn't viable she will remove it from the nest, maybe she knows these arn't viable, I have read of blutit nest boxes where only 3 out of ten eggs hae hatched so it's not unusual
Hi bluebird
This is where watching with a web-cam makes it more difficult to accept what's happening.
If you didn't have a web-cam and the Great Tits were just nesting in your nestbox, you would have no idea what was happening in there and would just sit back and wait until the chicks hatched. This is what you should do now.
No matter how tempting it is to try to interfere, you should leave well alone and let the parents get on with it, even if you believe they are getting it wrong.
Best wishes Chris
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