St Albans Nest Building Underway

I called in at the park in St Albans on my way back from talking in Tring the night before. Great to talk to a 'live' audience. The sun had just come above the trees giving beautiful but harsh light on the incoming Grey Heron as it went back and forth bringing twigs to the nest site. Only this one Heron was evident - hopefully there are others. The clouds then came up so the light was poor for the Magpie collecting nest material and the Coot guarding its nest site from a passing Moorhen.

Cormorants Nest building

The Cormorants are very busy building their nests at the moment and bring back all kinds of materials such as a feather in the first picture, twigs and even a whole reed. This proved to be quite a challenge getting it up to the nest high in the trees so after two failed circuits round the lake trying to gain enough altitude, it landed on the water to rest and then took off with the reed even heavier from the added water but successfully made it to the nest. Then time to fly off and take time to rest and dry off in the sun. I only saw one non-breeding bird (last image) - the rest were resplendent in their breeding plumage.

Nesting in Full Swing in the Wood

We spent a long time watching a pair of Long-Tailed Tits filling their cobweb and lichen nest with feathers. Only the ?female appeared to be collecting feathers though the male was in close attendance the whole time. A pair of Bluetits had a nest in a very tall stump and appeared to be bringing out pieces of egg shell. Have added a short time-lapse video of a L-t-tit rearranging an added feather.