One of my absolute favourite things in the world to do is to monitor nests. Its an incredibly exciting, rewarding and addictive thing to be involved in and I look forward to it every year, even though at times it can be exhausting. I've been doing it for around 10 years now as part of the BTO's Nest Record Scheme (NRS) but also consider it a really important part of the Ringing Scheme and I try to ring as many chicks as I can.
I got involved quite unexpectedly really, after we had put our first batch of nestboxes up in the Coastal Park. When we put them up we never really had plans to monitor them in any real way, we were just happy providing the opportunity for whatever birds wanted to use them! But then after a year or so somebody asked how many boxes were being used, and we honestly didn't know! So that's when myself and Dougie started to check the boxes each season. From there the natural progression was to then start to monitor natural nests. Obviously that was a whole different ball game as natural nests have to be actually looked for, a skill at the time I was completely oblivious to. Thankfully it was something that Dougie was incredibly good at and had vast experience in and he quickly became my nesting mentor. He taught me the two main methods of finding natural nests, cold searching and watching back. Cold searching is literally a case of searching a likely looking area in the hope of coming across a nest you didn't know was there. Watching back is when you see an adult bird with either nesting material or food in its mouth and you try to watch it go back to its nest (or watching a bird showing some kind of breeding behaviour). Both methods are incredibly rewarding, but the second method is the one I prefer as it requires a bit more field skills. But however you find a nest, the feeling is always the same - joy!
At first we only really concentrated on nest recording the Coastal Park and the Leas, because that's where we were based, but eventually I started to branch out on my own and go to other sites. I've put up nestboxes in various other places, from farms and woodlands to the Academy of Light and over time the boxes started to number into the hundreds. And the type of boxes put up have grown as well, from normal Tit style boxes, to open fronters and bigger boxes targeting Owls and Raptors. There's absolutely no doubt it will continue to increase! I've definitely gotten better at finding nests on my own, don't get me wrong I'm in no way an expert and there are many other people out there who are far better than I am, but I'm not too bad at it. By the way, I always refer to myself as a Nest Recorder rather than a Nest Finder. The simple reason is because I don't just find a nest then move on. Once I find a nest I try my absolute hardest to follow the nest all the way through to its completion, whatever the outcome is. The BTO get far more data the more information you can give them, so I always try to monitor til the end. Admittedly that can become incredibly tying but its a small price.
When finding/monitoring nests I don't limit myself to any particular species, I will literally monitor anything that's available! Obviously nestboxes DOES have a limit but natural nests could be anything. What does limit me is the time I have and the sites I visit. There's no point trying to find a species that simply isn't there, so I have to stick to the available species.
I absolutely love my new role with the Trust, I really do, but there's one thing that's happened since I started it. It's completely screwed up my nesting routine!!! In previous years I had a really good schedule going on, with different sites being visited on different days, either before or after work, and having more than enough time to not just check the boxes but casually search for natural nests at my own leisure. It was great. Now, because I'm no longer based at just the one site, and because I'm travelling all across the region, I have to visit all of my regular sites in one day. And because of all the nestboxes I have it means I have very little time to look for natural nests. I mean, I'm still finding some but nowhere near as much as I have in previous years. It's pretty disappointing, but I'm hoping that once I settle into the new role I can get a new kind of routine in place. Also, because of the different areas I'm covering I'm hoping I start to find completely new species that I didn't record before. For example one of the woods in Bransdale have nesting Redstarts and Pied Flycatchers, two species I've not monitored before. And as I'm spending more time in the North York Moors I'm sure there'll be opportunities to find a whole load of species I never had at the Coastal Park, whether its Wheatears and Ring Ouzels or Curlews and Plovers. So different might not necessarily be a bad thing!
