That's what according to Google translate a "koolmees" is called in English.
Last year January we bought a birdhouse hoping to have a tomtit pair use it in spring.
Sure enough one (male?) came to inspect it and even marked the opening pecking it.
But alas he didn't return.
This year was different,a couple is feeding it's offspring all day long now.
They seem to use holes in unusual places though.
Look at this movie:
http://www.zie.nl/video/opmerkelijk/Koo ... nzig3fgx7x
I sure wish them much luck.
Gerard.

Very cool, lot's fun to watch!

Wow Gerard that is quite a good shot. must have been a very good camera.

Actually, it looks a lot like a chickadee. I get plenty of them at my feeder, mainly of the Carolina variety. They have a loud and interesting call.

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/nestinginf ... chickadees

Nice safe place to raise your babies, I guess...unless it rains alot! Love the photo, too.

More like a Great Tit ("Parus Major" in the Linnean classification, "Mésange Charbonnière" in French).

Very nice looking shot Gerard.

I second the chikadee statement

Thanks for all the nice comments.

@GnuTux Chickadee's do indeed look a lot like our birds.
However fauna in the new world is different from the fauna in the old world.

@ofnuts They are indeed Parus Major and should have been translated to Great Tit.
Blame google translate.

About the photo:
I own a Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ28.
Not topnotch but has good zoom.
I put it on a tripod and set the LCD monitor on continuous.
Then I waited until one of the birds had gone inside and pressed the shutter when it came out.
It was shot through a window with vertical slats which gave a haze covered result.
I used Gimp's Brightness-Contrast control to get rid of the haze.

We live in the southwestern part of Holland where temperatures are generally higher than in the rest.
Yet as you can see on the date the movie was made those babies where more developed than ours now.

Gerard.

In the Netherlands? There are migrant birds, and now immigrant birds?

From what I could see you got good coverage. (silly flash screen wouldn't leave my screen so I had that blocking it)

These cameras are very limited by their sensor... Plenty of pixels, but the processing to remove the noise kills the detail. By comparison, what you get with an entry-level DSLR and a moderately priced lens (still about 1200€ worth of equipment though)(one of my early photos with a DSLR, I get even better results now):



I used to have a Lumix FZ8.... then I went to the Paris Air Show, took plenty of pictures, came home, looked at the pics, found them very nice, got proud, went to post to forums.... but all amateur photographers around Paris were doing the same, so I could compare my pics with theirs, taken in the same conditions, but with DLSRs... On their pictures you could count the rivets and read all the warning labels on the planes, and on mine you couldn't even see them. The FZ8 has been gathering dust since

@ofnuts,
I wish I could spent that on a camera.
Gerard.

Well the Great tit family has left the birdhouse yesterday.
We would have liked to see the young ones come out of the birdhouse.
They probably left at dawn while we were of course still asleep.

I read that when winter is severe they sometimes return.
I hope winter will be mild but maybe we'll see them again in winter.
Gerard.