The Nest Box

Many years ago, I was given a nest box and every year, without fail, either blue tits or great tits would use it, successfully rear and fledge their young.
I spotted another one on special offer, equipped with video camera (with sound and night mode) and a long lead with a power supply and a scart plug. I couldn't resist the idea of making a video diary of the next brood.
I gave my old one to my neighbour and set up the new one, connected to a DVD recorder and the TV.
Not too surprisingly, the birds set up home in the old box and completely ignored the new one, so all I had to look at was the empty bottom of the box. The following year, a pair of blue tits took up residence and the project was under way. The recorder has a simple red button which you press to record and again to stop. Over the weeks I accumulated lots of short clips. The quality wasn't great, but much better than what you get on your average mobile phone. The progress was fascinating. Contrary to what I thought, the birds don't sit on the eggs all the time, so I was able to count them and the number rose to 10, 7 of which hatched out, while the other 3 disappeared. As the fledglings grew in size, their numbers went down, until only 2 reached full size and flew away. Whatever happened to the rest remains a mystery. I examined the box and it just contained the immaculate nest and nothing else.
I took out the disc, labelled it and put it in a case, with a view to editing it. To this day, I have not found where I put it. Never mind, they'll come back next year, I reassured myself. But they didn't. The old box always has tenants.