Yesterday, I brought down the two cameras that had been monitoring bird nest boxes on Goats Peak. I had brought one camera and its nest box home earlier. It seems that the bluebirds, both Mountain and Western bluebirds that had come to the area earlier this year, did not stay. All three boxes were occupied by wrens. I did not identify the species of wren but perhaps your “birder” friends can tell you the species to be expected in that type of terrain—an old burn at around 500 metres elevation.

When I approached  the nest boxes yesterday, I saw small birds flitting around both of them. At a distance, with my binoculars, I saw a wren working at “house cleaning”. She worked inside but kept coming to the entrance to toss out small bits of something from her bill. When I went nearer, she left the nest but stayed chattering and flitting among the nearby bushes. When I opened the box, I saw that she must be removing old nesting material, as the box had obviously been used to raise a family; the walls were white-washed with bird lime but otherwise it was almost completely empty of the nest materials. It seemed that she was cleaning the nest in preparation for a second clutch. So I left both boxes but removed the cameras, as they had not been able to give me good pictures of these very small birds.

At the second camera, I found that it had no memory card. Either someone had taken it or most likely, I forgot to replace the card last time I visited it. Some cameras will store a few pictures in internal memory without a card, so I inserted a card, turned on the camera for a few minutes and checked it again--still no pictures.

The first camera had stored several hundred pictures since my last visit. This camera, a Moultrie MCG-12783, obviously is very sensitive to react to any movement within considerable range, even vegetation movements during windy periods, and it did take at least some pictures of the tiny wrens--but obviously, it does not have sufficient resolution for good, clear pictures of targets that small. The pictures that I did get seem to tell an interesting story.

This first picture shows a wren at the entrance to the nest box. 

A Kestrel has arrived at the box, perching at first on the lid---

----then looking inside

--- seeming probably to be reaching inside 

and finally

---leaving with an object clutched in his talons, presumably a nestling wren. I hope that at least some of the wren nestlings fledged and left the nest safely.

A Magpie arrives at the nest box, a bird that is highly intelligent but without the talons of a raptor---

---apparently not so successful in getting a nestling wren.

NOTE: I intend, in the near future, to stop sending out my Catch of the Day messages by email. I will continue with the blog entries, which give me more freedom to arrange text, photographs and videos, and that will be much less time-consuming. Plus, it will not overload your email in-box. 

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Up near the top right hand corner of the blog, you will see a place to register for email reminders. When a new blog entry is posted, you will then receive a short message by email, just a notice that http://catchofthedaylars.blogspot.ca/ has  a new entry.