Image from webcam captured by  Shanta, LK forum

Video recorded by  Fleur, LK forum

Translation  Liis

By Saturday  morning the great tit had laid an egg

Great tit     Rasvatihane      Parus major

Great tits nest everywhere in Estonia and this year about 300-400 thousand great tit pairs will build a nest.  In camera view birds have spent the night in all nests but the egg is in the first nest box. There is quite a lot to tell about our ordinary great tits during the breeding season.

In the Week in the Forest corner on the Animal of the Year home page we start monitoring the doings of a couple of badger families and events in their home forest by trail cameras.

This year, the Badger Year, Latvian zoologists installed several track cameras in protected Latvian forests. As in Estonia, our southern neighbours until now have no proper overview of their badger population. To complement the knowledge about badgers the Latvian forest agency Silava chose three large badger castles in northwestern Latvia in a nature reserve area, installed the cameras and now have sent us pictures and video cuts. In the video we can see how the badger –   āpsis in Latvian  – scratches itself. The other members of the large castle are not visible at the moment but it is known that a large number of inhabitants live there, more than in the home of our video stars in Saaremaa.

Great Tit Year science news conveyed by  Marko Mägi,  marko.magi@ut.ee

Photo Arne Ader

Translation Liis

Blue tit

Hawk-eyed, eagle eyed –the expressions are tied to the keen eyesight of birds.

Birds whose eyesight is noticeably better than that of humans are also able to see light invisible to the human eye – radiation in the UV part of the spectrum. The visual capacity of birds does however not stop there. Since many birds catch their prey in the air, they must distinguish a great number of details in movements in order to be successful. While a human viewer sees what happens on a film screen as a uniform smooth movement when in fact looking at images that change at a rate of 24 frames per second, then birds are able to see many more frames per second individually.

Text: Urmas Sellis and Jānis Ķuze

Transmission courtesy of  Tele2 ja EENet

Translation Liis

Two cameras are installed at black stork nests, one in South Estonia and the other in South Latvia

The black stork nest in Estonia is new to the viewers as well as to us: