How to help a single parent (blackcap)?

Thank you all very much for your replies! Unfortunately since writing I have hardly seen the blackcap, certainly not going back and forth from the same place as he was at the weekend. The idea of there being young around was based on having seen him doing that repeatedly and the fact that the female had a caterpillar in her beak when we found her (not sure how significant that is though).

@Robbo I have to confess I am not actually in the UK but in France (outskirts of Paris) - I'm not yet aware of anything like the RSPB community here though.
I'm pretty sure the blackcap has been heard here for at least a month - not sure if that is long enough? At any rate, I'm now wondering if my initial idea about the young was completely wrong...

I will contact a friend in South of France who will likely be able to suggest groups for you to join but is also good to hear from you on here!

Hi cigaline, I'm not sure I can add much to what the others have said, but I live in France too, in Charente Maritime on the Gironde estuary. I'm a member of the LPO, which is the equivalent of the RSPB but much smaller with 50,000 members compared to 1,000,000 members of RSPB. This is a link to the National website https://www.lpo.fr/ There are local people in every departement & sometimes other local associations. What département are you in? They also have a facebook page, but I don't do facebook! For general help & chat, you're probably better off on here!
I buy birdfood in bulk from the UK as it's much cheaper, helped by people on here who gave me the good addresses (thanks Alan). However live mealworms could be tricky. Our Great tits are almost fledged, but you're further North so maybe the Blackcaps hadn't started nesting or perhaps the eggs were just laid.
You can also get local information on the "faune" network which has details of local events & you can put observations on. This is the link www.faune-france.org/index.php & then you can click on the site most local to you.
If you want more info, you can come on here or send me a personal mail via this forum.
Good luck!

Hello all,

I just wanted to revive this thread to share with you all the very exciting news I discovered the other day: our male blackcap somehow managed to raise a whole brood after all!

Having heard but not seen a single sighting of the male all summer, to my astonishment the other day I saw what looked like (to my inexperienced eye) a juvenile female in the elder tree outside the window. A lot more coming and going of female and male was seen that day (but too quick to be sure if adult or young) until a couple of days later, we saw 2 young males and a female, all together in the tree at the same time!

It seems a miracle to me but I suppose the male must have somehow found a new mate...

Nice to hear about the Blackcaps in your garden Cigaline.       All juveniles (before they gain their adult feathers) will resemble the female of the species, a bit like Bullfinches.     This is a newly fledged Blackcap I came across at the beginning of August,  a few years ago (on a Derbyshire Walk)  …..  as you can see it has a brown cap to the head and resembles the female Blackcap (it could have been male or female).  

Wow those pictures are fabulous Hazel! Thanks for explaining what the juveniles look like. I suppose I was using the term juvenile without being sure of how long they considered as such... Of the three birds we saw, 2 had distinct black caps, and the other had a brown cap. So they definitely had adult feathers but I thought that they still seemed smaller than the adult I had seen (not by much though). And the fact that there were two males together made me think they must be part of a new brood.

Morning cigaline,    I've been reading up more about the juvenile Blackcap and seems you may be able to distinguish the sexes on juveniles although I don't know if this is possible immediately after fledging the nest or maybe a week or so later.   This is what I read   "Juveniles are similar to the adult female, except the juvenile males have black-brown cap and the juvenile female a yellow-brown cap".   I'm now looking back at my photos and thinking is this perhaps a male as it looks more black-brown on the cap … then again I'd need the help from an expert !!