This post goes for 'Show me a photo (of a bird)' contest, round #121. Week's topic was 'BIRD ON WIRE'.
Lovely coincidence again: 'Bird on a wire' is the topic I usually skip, cause I don't have such photos in my archive, simply it's not my subject for photography; but exactly a couple of weeks ago I added such photos under my belt, and here is a little story connected with them, I hope you will find it enjoyable.
Our summer house is a tiny wooden shed made of pine logs with a glass veranda and an attic above them. Wasps love to inhabit the attic - every spring we clean off some last-year paper-ball wasp-houses; and in winter, careless field mice like to populate the house, probably due to the stockings we leave, and mice are willing to gnaw even plastic wraps and soap! not to mention small bags of seeds... We categorically do not welcome mice, and wasps we treat with respect and caution.
So... this spring, in May to be precise, new tenants showed up, this time not in the attic, not at all.. it's hard to describe: there happened to be a secret hidden technical space, at the junction between the house wall and the roof slope. We learned about their appearance only by the sound of newborn chicks! Only later, watching visitors with a telephoto lens, I realized it were the tits who had settled a nest under our reliable roof.
Sitting on the veranda and having breakfast, we heard (but did not see) such a typical sound landscape / pattern: silence - a faint squeak of chicks - the squeak grows and turns into hubbub and noise: this means that a parent has arrived with food in its beak, and the chicks are trying to outvoice each other, mom! dad! give me food!!!! - then the noise smoothly weakens and silence returns, but not for long, because this cycle was repeated literally every 2 (!) minutes. Both parents carouseled at a terrifying speed, delivering caterpillars and insects from nearby trees and bushes non-stop.
Tits are shy and timid birds, they will not let a person close to them, and even when the growing offspring are nearby ... caution and paranoia quadruple!
Therefore, flying up to the nest and seeing a person standing nearby, the tit sat on the nearest birch and waited for me to leave - in order to proceed further to the nest without unnecessary witnesses, not to give out its location to anyone. But I didn't leave! - and the chicks, sensing that the parent and feeding are already nearby, began to make noise and roll out their usual demands.
Then the tit fruitlessly waited, flew a little closer to the nest and waited some more ... after which, instantly - like a diver jumping into the water - it momentarily skillfully disappeared, sinked into some invisible gap between the sheathing wooden boards. I was able to consider the nest location roughly only after 3 takes.
Do you see any nest in the frame? me too! But it is there, thats for sure.
This information was useless for me - I'm not a titmouse, and I could not crawl through that (centimeter?) gap with all my desire. Therefore, I do not have a photo of the nest, or the chicks, or the feeding process. But for the first time in my life, I got so close to this process, and I photographed a titmouse parent with a caterpillar in its beak intended for chicks.
Also, there is another intresting remark I could not but make; its kinda a guess based on what I witnessed. Reacting to the growing cry of the chicks: mom, we are waiting, we want to eat, why are you delaying? - the tit became nervous and started ... I don't know: was it a hysteria? or some sort of non-verbal answering? in general, it trembled all over, and especially its open wings vibrated and shook; it can be seen in this photo, tho video would better convey it. Note, the wings were not only open, but they were trembling / twitching.
That is the story behind these few photos. Most pics indeed are basically the same, I made half a dozen takes (from which one even may glue up the animation: the tit turns its head in different directions, trying to understand if I deign to leave or not?) Therefore, I will add just a couple of photos to the post, the rest are plus or minus the same...
Let me round up here, but I want to add one more pic to the blog as an extra. Capture from frozen February wintertime, to benefit cool down processes in your body! Enjoy.
