France in Focus

This morning we had a traumatic few minutes with a bluetit baby.
We were on our way out and heard a lot of squeaking. We have a newish nesting box in the covered area by the front door and a couple of bluetits chose it to nest in.
Sadly they didn’t choose their nesting material very wisely and one of the little ones had managed to get entangled in some very fine nylon filament. God knows where it came from. The poor thing was swinging upside down from the entrance hole. Don’t know how long it had been there.
We got it down and eventually managed to untangle the foot.
Sadly there was no sign of the adults. We left it outside in a safe place for an hour or so but it didn’t budge. Poor little thing died at midday.
I’m pretty sure the box is now unused and I will clean it out this week to try and make sure the nylon is binned.
Nature is tough but manmade materials make it that little bit tougher for them.

They might have mistaken it for horses' mane/tail hair which is often used for nesting. It's always sad to see something caught up like that. We've seen sea gulls and cormorants with fishing line wound around them. It's impossible to catch them to remove it.

My only gripe with weed-suppressing membrane is that, depending on the quality, the edges fray and produce strings of black plastic. I can break it with my fingers, but a bird or animal wouldn't have the strength and it's a real pain when it gets tangled round mower blades or a strimmer head.

Quiksilver wrote: ↑Mon May 06, 2024 6:40 pm My only gripe with weed-suppressing membrane is that, depending on the quality, the edges fray and produce strings of black plastic. I can break it with my fingers, but a bird or animal wouldn't have the strength and it's a real pain when it gets tangled round mower blades or a strimmer head.

This stuff looks like very fine sewing machine thread. Difficult to see.

Another sad tale of fledglings. Last week Biggles found a dead one in the horses' water trough. There is a tree immediately behind the tough, but no visible nest. Over the next two days another two fledglings shared the same fate. Biggles then said he suspected a baby cuckoo had taken over the nest and expected to find one more poor little mite. Sure enough two days later he found the fourth dead beside the trough.

The fuss over cuckoos has always puzzled me. Who wants to hear them when all it suggests is that some other species is being decimated?

I waited until today to clean out the box. There were two more little dead birds in there. One entangled in the same fine string.
The nest seemed to be made mostly of moss(we have lots of that) and I couldn’t find any more of the fine thread that did for them.
Anyway the box is clean and ready if anyone wants to try again.

The sparrows that nest in the eaves of our house are in for a shock next week. Top tiles are being replaced as well as the edging tiles being re-mortared. Can't say I'm sorry, though, because it's sheer suicide for the fledgelings when they try to leave the nests. Maybe the parents will try to find sites with a more baby-friendly drop and landing

Headers wrote: ↑Mon May 06, 2024 8:30 pm This stuff looks like very fine sewing machine thread. Difficult to see.

Let's hope the parents don't find any more of it!