We watch a pair of nuthatches feeding their chicks in a nest hole high up in a willow. They arrive with food every five or ten minutes and usually collect a faecal sack which they swoop down amongst the shrubs away from the nest to dispose of.
The female is noticeably lighter and more silver grey than the male which has a slate grey back. At one stage, after looking into the hole briefly, she pauses motionless on the right hand edge of the tree near the hole, facing downwards, with an item of food (perhaps a. It turns out that the male was in the nest hole and when he pops out a minute or two later with a faecal sack in his beak, she goes in.
Our friends John and Heather Gardner have been following progress on this nest watching the parent birds carefully blocking the natural cavity in the willow with beakfuls of mud. At this stage of a the process as soon as the nuthatches left the tree a blue tit would fly in the to investigate the hole. The nuthatches have seen off the competition.
Nuthatches nested in the same cavity last year but the mud barrier needed replacing after the winter.
Above the nest hole a hoof fungus projects like a canopy over a door.
