Blue tits!

My friend Alice was lucky enough to get pictures of a blue tit fledgling on her trip to Austria. I was a bit jealous because I've never seen them in person, myself.

Until today.

On the birch tree a few yards away in front of my balcony, hangs a nesting box my friend Torleif hung up for spring in 2004. Great tits, the most common tit bird in Norway, happily moved in two seasons in a row. Torleif had hoped that blue tits might find their way to the box. Today I sat out in lovely sunshine, trying to read, when I realized that the tit parents were feeding their young. I went and got my new camera and tried to get pictures of the little critters, but I and my camera were not quick enough.

I tried the video feature. I discovered the birds had a certain timing: Both parents were flying off, bringing back live insects (I assume), one in each direction from the nest, so I didn't need to leave the camera running all the time (the birds were nearly like clockwork). I thought it was a great tit pair I was watching, until I saw what my camera saw. Here is a still photo from a video (clicking on photo leads to video), with my gasp at the end, because I finally realized what I was looking at: The blue tit!