How We Became Bird Box Streamers
Right now, in our Northumberland garden, a pair of blue tits have just begun laying eggs in our nest box… And you can watch all the action right here on our website.
I have always loved watching wildlife; whether on a country walk, visiting a park, or just looking out of the window at the goings-on in my garden. Taking photos and videos, and sharing these with friends and family brought me a great deal of joy.
About 15 years ago, I bought a bird feeder camera and hung it from a tree in my garden. I captured many hours of video footage which I would eagerly review, to see just who had been visiting the feeder. I amassed plenty of videos of common garden birds, alongside some of their more timid counterparts: a messy-eating woodpecker, for example, and a nuthatch who preferred to be upside down on the feeder!
I also caught the local red squirrels in action, although you wouldn’t necessarily know they were red as my camera did not capture colours terribly well.
The bird feeder camera was great, but it was time consuming to watch all the footage it produced and save the parts I wanted to keep. The camera had no wifi capability, or motion detection, like today’s cameras do. And there was certainly no possibility of checking on the camera feed from my mobile phone. How times have changed!
Fast forward a few years and my husband and I acquired our first nest box camera on which we were thrilled to watch and record a pair of blue tits raising their family. We had not noticed anyone paying any attention to our nest box and it was quite by chance that one of us checked the camera when we did, only to find a nest had already been built and a clutch of eggs had been laid! What a wonderful surprise! We were hooked from then on. It was such a privilege, to have a window into the private lives of our garden birds.
A couple of years ago I received a new nest box camera as a birthday present and my husband hand made the bird box it now resides in. Our blue tits loved our old nest box so much though, that for a while we thought they would never take up residence in the upgraded model! Clearly they had been very successful in the old box and kept returning to it. This year however, things have changed, and after a few visits to the new box during the winter months, they have officially moved in and built a very cosy looking nest!
The first egg was laid on the 23rd April - the first of many, we hope! We are now looking forward to seeing our blue tit pair raise their chicks and are delighted to be able to share this experience with you.
Although the nest box camera is the star of the show, it’s not the only camera we have. Our website also features footage from our trail cam, which has captured foxes and badgers in the allotment and frogs in our garden pond - showing us a completely new world that emerges under cover of darkness!
You can watch our live stream of the nest box right here on our website and browse nest box highlights and snippets from our trail cam, on our Latest Videos page.
Join us as we explore the secret world of a bluetit family, from the very first egg, right up to the moment the chicks fledge.
Rebecca Mears, April 2026