Hello! I have a little great tit who has been making a sweet nest in a terrifyingly dangerous place in my garden, about 1 metre 20 off the ground, close to where I have seen a rat, in the branches of some honeysuckle and ivy, and in fairly full view of any other predator. It is also within about 2 metres of my back door/window. I have jays who come into the garden, and there is not only my cat, but also the neighbour's cat when my dog doesn't chase it away fast enough. When we move into April, there will also be full sun on the nest for a couple of hours in the late morning. (There is not much sun yet, as there is a highish wall opposite the nesting place, so the sun needs to be a little higher in the sky to reach it. We already have a nesting box in the garden, and perhaps this little great tit making the nest hatched from it last year as the box was used twice and I think we had about 7 little great tits in all.
Yesterday, I quickly put up another nesting box at the bottom of the garden, in case she could be tempted to move.
What, do you think I should do? Protect it as best as I can with prickly plastic stuff? Go outside a lot and spend a bit of time there to put her off this dangerous spot, or leave her, and hope for the very best?
Thank you so much!
Alexandar
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Tony
My Flickr Photostream
Hi Alex, welcome form Caithness at the very top of Scotland. Not a nice situation, but as you say, it is nature, so fingers crossed all will be well. To post photos hit use rich formatting at the bottom right of the large posting box, then hit insert, then hit images etc, thenchoosefrom the options in the two boxes to pick from web or other and photos files, wherever you have you pictures stored, pick your picture and you will see it come into the empty box. Since we had this site upgraded pre Christmas, there has been much talk about the sizes of the photos, you can leave as is with the numbers that show in the two boxes, or change each to 500, or leave the left box empty and put 500 in the right one, then hit okay and your photo will be in your reply box. You can then add any text. To add multiple photos just repeat the process.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Hi Alexandar, nice to have someone from the Paris area posting - I think that's a first for us. To post a photo click on the "Use rich formatting" link under the reply box. There you will see "Insert" and from the drop down menu choose "insert image/video". Just make sure the image doesn't exceed 4Mb and preferably a bit smaller.
I've never heard of a Great Tit building a nest in a Honeysuckle before. It does sound to be in a rather exposed position. Of course it may come to its senses and abandon the idea before it lays.
Let us know how you get on