Blue Tits 2024 01 09 Roosting

Blue Tit Roosting Overnight in Both Bird Boxes

We have two bird boxes 10m apart on the north-facing wall of our house.  Bird box no. 1 has blue-tit-sized entrance hole.  Bird box no. 2 has great-tit-sized entrance hole.

We have already seen a blue tit roosting in bird box no. 1.  Video Blue Tits 2023 11 27   Roosting

Now there is a blue tit roosting in each bird box.

Clips 1 & 2.  Bird box no. 1.  Blue tit arrives in the evening and eventually settles down to roost.  The camera has infra-red lighting (which does not disturb blue tits) to view inside in black-and-white.

Clips 3 - 5.  Bird box no. 2.
Clip 3 shows the bird box in the evening as light fades.  The bird boxes are illuminated with an internal light which comes on when it is bright outside.  This allows the camera to view in HD colour during the day.  The image flickers because as the light fades, the internal light flickers on and off.  Eventually the light fades such that only external light from the entrance hole illuminates the inside.  Clip 3 is rather too long and boring, sorry!
In Clip 4 the light level becomes so low that the camera changes to black-and-white (with infra-red lighting).
Clip 5 shows a second blue tit arrived and settling down to roost.

The blue tits leave dropping in the boxes as they roost (we saw this before) and seems very unhygienic.  The more recent arrival in box 2 is even dirtier than the bird in box 1.

The infra-red picture quality in box 2 is poorer than from box 1 (same camera type).

In these clips, the audio is well out of sync with the video.  This seems to be a problem that the cameras used have.