The private lives of tits

A REALITY show with a difference is running on the internet.

It features a blue tit nest in Derek Mooney’s garden at Kilmacud in Dublin. The nest-box has a television camera inside it with another one focused on the tits’ front door, the tiny hole through which the pair enter and leave.

With almost three million blue tits in Ireland, such nests are commonplace. Yet the interest in this little family has been phenomenal. The number of hits to the website on Friday, May 11, the day the eggs began to hatch, was 24,276 and the total since ‘live screening’ began is over a 250,000. Paddy Power Bookmakers is giving odds on the fledging date of the babies.