Thinking nothing was ever going to nest there, after two months wait we had our first visitor right at the end of March.
Two days later she started decorating
2nd April she brought her mate to have a look
Over the next few weeks she built the home entirely on her own.
April 12th, almost 2weeks to the day from when she first viewed the property, she slept there for the first night!
9days after moving in you can see the tip of the first egg in the hollow of the nest, just under her tail.
Now apparently she will lay up to 16 eggs (one a day) over the next two weeks before starting to hatch them.
Losing 10% of her body weight each time. The male has been feeding her insects in the nest but very infrequently. His work starts once they are hatched.
What a cool “cross-discipline” project to offer as a course…make a birdbox (laser/woodshop/CNC), build a nature-cam with a Raspberry Pi and transmit the pics (IoT).
I already had that planned as a project/course for November/December (too late now for nesting birds) tying that in to the electronics as well is a brilliant idea
I’d been thinking of deleting this app as it annoys me with its frequency……but with this stories ‘to be continued’ I’m staying! I can think of no better ad for Makerspace.
Well the notifications from the birdbox in France have been going mad today …… looks like the blue tit population is about to get a boost!! Three mouths spotted so far
Well unfortunately the power has gone down at the house in France , I will be there on Tuesday to see what the problem is.
So far here is the progress
The first sign of life was around the end of April
We are starting to look at our content inclusion for the Dulwich festival Maker fair we have a “Don’t be Shy! submit your Make” event happening on Friday. Would this be of any interest to you maybe and/or do you know anyone else I can reach out too?
I’ve been thinking about building one of these recently but have no experience with electronics. I’d love to use it as an opportunity to get some electronic skills with a raspberry pi and would be very excited to help put a course together - is there an electronics guru who would be interested in getting involved? @electrotechs?
What did you use for the networked camera Mark - was it an off the shelf solution?
