Bird Story #2: Coal tits ( Beep-oo)

Lots of stuff going on in the garden now.  We have 2 baby blackbirds that are being carefully shepherded as last year the Magpies killed both nests of Merles that were near us in the hedges.  The parents were desperately swooping and chattering frantically but it was too late.  We buried the mangled bodies that had been dropped by the Magpies in the street. 

  That's when I bought my slingshot.   Magpies are at the BOTTOM of my list of creatures.  I know , they are just doing their thing,  but I can't STAND them,  and will do my part in eliminating them if I can.  Urrrrgh.   (Maybe I should sign up for the magazine I found on Amazon the other day called by the  paradoxical name: Garden and Gun!)

                                                            

 This little guy is the coal tit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_Tit  I found this photo on Wikipedia as well.  They are a bird not found in North America but there are a raft of them across the Mediterranean and Europe. The coal tit has some pretty understandable language .  We know their warning and mating calls now which can be amazingly loud for such a small beastie boy. My husband calls all of them Beep-oo as that sounds like their call which is repeated over and over when spring starts.  I love their flitting bodies so full of bird-like exuberance.

A month or so ago while I was in the lower forty ( ha, we have a small plot ) I heard what I thought was a woodpecker in the bay tree ("Sauce Laurier" in French from whence bay leaves come for cooking).

I looked up only to find, not a woodpecker, but a coal tit pecking away near the door to a nesting box that I had put up 4 or 5 years ago, alas to no takers.

 Perhaps there was a family raised in it the first year but nothing after that.  I cleaned out the old nest hoping that was the reason I had no tenants, but no.

  Suddenly I got it!  The hole was too small for this guy and he was doing his best to widen it or tell me about it.

I ran in the house and tapped in on mighty Google: " nesting box, coal tit, size of hole"  and "et voila: 2.5 cm".  I measured ours and it was too small!

 OUt came the wood rasp and I grated away on that box, hanging off a ladder with my arm wobbling around over my head like a run-away hose pipe.  A week later we had a male and a female coal tit coming and going from the box.  And for about 3 weeks now they have been doing the feedings non-stop.

 This week we got up too late to see the youngsters launch themselves onto nearby branches and fly off with the exhausted parents.

 I did see a whole row, maybe seven or more, tiny birds flitting merrily above us on the high railing and I like to think that  that was our lot...successfully fledged and living to tell the tale.