Blue tit family

While I was working at the computer I was disturbed by a commotion out in the back garden. The distinctive sound of baby birds begging. I rushed out into the back garden, the noise appeared to be coming from the tree at the end of the garden. I looked up into the tree, but the birds were in the outer branches and not visible. Suddenly they flew from the tree and settled in a tree two gardens down the road.

The young birds were in the tree on the right. A parent bird, possibly two, flew from this tree to another tree (left) further down the road to collect food before returning to the tree where the fledglings were waiting in the branches. Althought the parents collected food high up in the second tree, when returning they swopped down low and entered the tree from the lower branches and made their way up the tree to the chicks.

This was presumably to make sure they did not attract attention to the young birds. The parents left from the lower branches to fly back to the feeding tree. I manged to take some pics, the sequence is shown below. They have been heavily cropped because of the distance they were taken.

After about 5 minutes, one and then another flegeling followed an adult beck to the feeding tree. Another two seemed to follow - but their may have been more. 

Fledged blue tits

After a week spent in schools, this was the first chance to check out the nest box. When I arrived at Easthill Park I headed straight over towards the nest box. As I passed the large tree adjacent to the box I could hear the demanding calls of newly fledged chicks. It did not take long to locate the source of the calls.

Blue tit chicks were calling from different branches, at least one adult was busy collecting food and feeding the chicks in turn. After being feed a couple of the chicks followed the adult, obviously wanting to be next in line for the food.

The fledgelings insistent calls were accompanyed by wing quivers and open gape. One chick (below) followed the adult onto the ground and then flew up onto the bark of the tree.

I noticed a couple of the fledglings were pecking at the branches and leaves. It was difficult to know how many of the chicks successfully fledged. The most I could count inone go was five, but they werevery active and kept moving around making counting them difficult. However, I was pleased to see that the adults had successfully reared some chicks. There was no sound coming from the nest box.