Blue Tits in the Garden

It looks as thought the Blue Tits are nesting again this year - I was watching them earlier, arriving at the box with feathers, moss and grass. We missed them last year, but the year before I'd got some nice shots of them going to and fro with caterpillars for their young.

That was the first year I'd got my digital SLR (a Pentax *istD), and I wasn't as used to using it then as I am now. This year will hopefully mean better images, with a different fence too!













That year's photos were interesting because some of the caterpillars were identifiable, so we could tell what butterflies we had in the area. One of the shots (not the one here) showed a Purple Hairstreak caterpillar (thanks to Colin Jupp for the I.D.), a butterfly I wasn't familiar with until last summer - they tend to stay around the top of Oak Trees, most noticable in late afternoon/early evening. Got some pics of them, but they were a long way off.











It would also be good to get some of the fledglings after they've left the box, although they always seem to disperse quite rapidly, after leaving the nest first thing in the morning.

Fingers crossed they might loiter a bit this year.