Sad News ....

[marioc]

Hi all,
I am a new member, but have been reading the forum for a while now.
This is my second year of 'nestcamming' .. Last year we were lucky enough to have a pair of Great Tits take residence, produce, hatch and successfully fledge 8 chicks.
This year, once again a pair of Great Tits took residence, produced 9 eggs, 8 of which hatched 7 days ago. Everything appeared to be going well ... However, I woke up this morning, to discover that all 8 chicks had died. The mother was still popping into the nest with food but with no open mouths to feed ... so sad. I notice that other forum members have also suffered the same fate, does anyone know why this should have happened so suddenly ?
One other question, the nestbox now seems to be attracting many flies, would it be prudent to clear out the nextbox now, to prevent the influx of more flies and eventually maggots ? And if so, on the off chance that a couple may produce a second brood, would it be better just to remove just the corpses and leave the nest, or remove the whole lot ?

[RKB]

Are you sure it's the female that's still coming, and not the male?

When all the chicks die in the nest the usual cause is that the female has been killed somewhere outside (Sparrowhawks take up to a quarter of local breeding tits in spring, so this is common). Only the female has a brood patch, so only she can brood the young to keep their temperature up - they cannot regulate their own temperature until they're fully feathered, so without her they quickly die of exposure.

I really wouldn't go near the box at the moment. It is liable to be full of hungry fleas looking fr a new host. I'd leave it, and clean out in the winter as usual (though annual cleaning isn't really necessary - nobody cleans out wild nest sites that are used every year without problems). Bird fleas don't do much harm, but they can hang around on your body for several days (trust me!). Second broods are not common at all in Great Tits, so you're not losing much by waiting.

Out of 20 tit nests that I was monitoring this year, three males were killed and two females. The females without males still reared young, but the chicks in nests without females all died the same morning...one male was still bringing food hours later.