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Tit's nest on balcony (lemmy.zip)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/birding@lemmy.world
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Hi, We had a bird house fixed on our balcony wall for several years. This season, a family of Tit bird (i think) elected to nest in there. Very pleased to help with sheltering, we are wondering how to make their stay best. They now got kids as we see them flying back and forth very often with food to given them.

We keep the use of balcony minimal, but wonder if having a meal outside is a big disturbance/stress for them or not? Seems they don't want to get in and out their house if someone's on the balcony.

Anything else we can do to help them, besides not interfering and watching them happily from our living room inside (and clean our window for future pictures..)?

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[–] 6 points 5 months ago*

If y'all's tits are anything like our chickadees you're in the best of company. Usually they're the most curious and friendly of any birdo I know.

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    [–] 3 points 5 months ago*

    Congrats! It is going to be fun hearing the tjeeptjeeptjeeptjeep every time mom or dad comes home with the food. Think it is a blue tit in the picture.

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    [–] 2 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Congrats! Cute little birb, quite surely a blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus). If you can, try to disturb them as little as possible during the few week it takes for them to raise their offspring. As long as the parents are zipping in and out, they likely find enough to feed their young and don't need any additional support. Blue tits will only eat seeds and nuts as adults and mostly during the winter. The chicks need small invertebrate prey like insects and spiders. So other than offer some meal worms, there's not much you can do. Once you see the fledglings hopping around your balcony, some seeds may be fine but stick to smaller stuff like poppy and avoid the big and heavy stuff like sunflower or peanut until winter. Here's a bit more background if you speak German: https://bremen.nabu.de/tiere-und-pflanzen/voegel/voegelnhelfen/27691.html

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 5 months ago

    Thank you so much for the details and the link! It seems very complete and we'll learn a bunch thanks to it.

    Would it be worth having some wooden platform close to/under the house to help in their first flights? Would they even use it?

    Good suggestion with the SMALL seeds. We are afraid any seeds or normal birdfood might attract bigger birds.. as it has in the past. But poppy might be small enough?

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    • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    If they are actively feeding babies this might not be the best time for you to dine out there. At least you'd want to put some raw unsalted sunflower seeds or peanuts out there afterwards, to help them catch up on the interruption. There also might be poop out there. I'm sure Wikipedia will give you an estimate of how long before they fledge.

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    • [–] [S] 1 point 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

    Here is one of the times they checked the surroundings and brought a worm home. I cannot tell which one is the male or female yet.

    The speed is 1/4. 😃

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