Hi allI pass this small playground near my home in North Wales most days and it never occurred to me that any self-respecting bird would chose the slot in the post in the middle of the image to nest. As I walked past this lunchtime I heard some young birds calling and on investigating the post spotted it had four almost full fledged Blue Tits in residence. How on earth they have survived the temperatures inside the post in the recent heatwave I do not know but the ones I could see looked healthy enough. The playground is in constant use by late afternoon as its right next door to a primary school and many of the parents take their kids into play after school and sit on the seats seen in the background. The parent have obviously got used to the constant disturbance and just go ahead and feed the young anyway. I stood some 15 feet away after I took the photo and both parents came back and went in the post and fed the young before flying out with a fecal pellet.
Nesting sites would not seem to be a problem here as the whole peninsular has large amounts of standing dead wood, but obviously sites around my immediate area are in demand if the parents chose to use this site. There are large numbers of Nuthatch and GS Woodpeckers on the Peninsular so I assume they get first pick of any nesting holes in timber. Within ten miles of my home I know of 6 GS Woodpecker nests which I have found simply by hearing the young birds calling from the nest holes as I cycled past
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On Holiday last week in Scotland a pair of Blue Tits had fledged young calling fron a mounted wall Ash tray at the local pub.!!
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