Plume de Ville

From day to day.

March 1st

28 February. Superb spring sun, the last day of February. Around noon a blue tit arrives. A few seconds later another joined the blue tit. She descends to the nest box and the other  flies off. The first comes in the nestbox without much hesitation. It is noon. The visit will be short: a few seconds.

March 2

Sunshine and blue sky. 12 °

Visit from two today.
A blue tit arrives, waits for. A second joined the first.
The first,  probably the male, tail erect, wings lowered, leaps to the nest, goes to the entry, he returns to the second tit with the same pantomime, goes down to the nest box at the entrance. Clearly show the way, did you see what I found?. The other tit looks at from above. Come see! Well, its girlfriend for the moment does not seem much interested, she flies off followed immediately by the male. Go perseveres friend! The next might be the right one. They both come back several times.

Sittelle torchepot. Wood Nuthatch

[Sitta europaea -
Passériformes- Sittidés]
Wood Nuthatch

As the woodpeckers  (the name "Sitté  " means woodpecker in Greek) this beautiful bird can hide his food in a crevasse. He hammers out it and he breaks it with noisy blows, (but it's not a woodpecker, it is of a different order)

We can see it normally in the process of browsing the trunks and branches in all directions often upside down, as I have presented here. It clings to the trunk with a curled finger. This one, photographed in early January at Vincennes, tries to break the hardened fat ball. Ideal time for the photo. It nests in a tree hole or a crevasse, or a nest box but begins the building with a mixture of mud and saliva to reduce the size, just of the size of the bird, to protect her brood of larger birds. It is not "Torchepot" for nothing! (In French "torchepot" means "wipes a pot".)
It is the size of a great tit (14cm).

March 7

A visit to the nest box.

In the afternoon, a blue tit sings perched in the willow. And by chance I see a second blue out of the nest box! No pictures, I have not checked the camera and it was too dark to get a good photo.

March 8

This morning very dark and rainy, 10 °. A little light in the afternoon.
One (or "the" blue?) blue comes regularly every day. At least, we see it at least once in the day.

Long runway mandatory ...

For the Mute Swan.
















And for the Great Cormorant..

Grand Cormoran. [Phalacrocorax carbo - Pélécaniformes phalacrocoracidés ] Great Cormorant

Spring wedding dress for cormorants displaying a tuft of white feathers on the thigh.

March 10

Overcast, light rain in the morning, 5 °. A little warm in the afternoon. 10 °

Output of the first bumblebees.

Females (queens) build a new nest, a hole in the floor that will house the new colony, each year. They alone have spent the winter and emerge in spring.Tthe queen is the only bumblebee to hibernate through the winter

The settlement will house male and female and workers. Only females can sting.

These bumblebees are used in greenhouses as pollinators.