the Hotel had some interlopers today. Dennis and I were there to add some new gravel to the nestbox - we'd taken most the gravel out last year and decided to hold off replacing it last fall because it would be frozen solid at this time of the year and given that Smiley is a rather poor scrape maker, we thought we'd wait until spring (aka now) and add new, dry, unfrozen gravel so that if Smiley returned (never a given any bird will return) that he would perhaps have an easier time of making a scrape and if Princess returned, that she would choose the nestbox over the nestledge ... she hasn't been there for a while so anything that helps keep her in the box is a good thing. Knock on wood she returns and chooses the nestbox. But we weren't the only interlopers, looks like we have two more birds in town - both look to be females. One I will definitely need to read the band number on, there are more than a couple of possibilities. The other one, I'm pretty sure I know who it is but I'd like love to get a second look ... perhaps tomorrow she'll still be around and cooperative. Oh, and the male that has been around since last Saturday is definitely Hart. What I can say is that Princess is definitely not home yet but it is early days yet, this is about when our birds start to return and with the warmer weather over the next two weeks we have more returnees very soon ...
