Mondays at the moment are when I help some of the Wildlife Team here at Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal as we check nestboxes round and about the estate. I’m very much a junior member of the team – lots to learn. The questions change as the season progresses. Which boxes are occupied? (by no means all). Which boxes have meticulously constructed nests within – different species, different nesting styles? Which ones have eggs? How many? Covered or uncovered? Cold? Meaning more will be laid. Or warm? Meaning they are about to be incubated. Is there an adult sitting on said eggs? And now – increasingly – have they hatched? Are the absent parents out and about frantically securing food for those ever-open mouths. Which nests – partly finished or fully constructed have been deserted?
The first photo is of nuthatch hatchlings, maybe four days old, courtesy of Colin, a fellow volunteer. My – slightly fuzzier -photo is of some even younger blue tits.
It’s a tough year. It’s been cold, and insects and caterpillars simply aren’t about. Food is hard to come by. Eggs are abandoned, hatchlings starve. Today wasn’t as bad as we feared, and we were glad to see so many boxes with eggs yet to hatch, just as – finally – the temperatures are promised to rise this week.
For Monday Portrait.
I did rather wonder why not a single soul had either ‘liked’ or commented on this post. It turned out to be simple. I hadn’t pressed ‘publish’ after I had written it …
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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