27 May 2024
Good Morning,
My post is very relatively short today. My son flew in from the West Indies on Sunday morning. While I have been to visit or saw him in Asia, he hasn’t been ‘home’ for ten years! The day was magical. He is here for a month. Did I say I was in bliss?
I am behind in sending pictures of the garden animals and the girls. They are all doing well. All of the birds in the garden have nests full of babies and Mr Crow is going through 3 kg of cheesy dogs in a day and wanting more! There are little squirrels running about and fat little sparrows and wrens. Dyson is getting ‘fatter’. There will be baby Grays shortly. Missey, Hugo Yugo, Calico, and Baby Hope are not too keen on human company in the house. They miss all the individual attention! It was so funny.
Breaks my heart. The inbox was full. Morning Sadness: The GHO took another chick at Lake Murray. This proves that strobe lights do not work. The only thing keeping the GHOs and eagles from taking osplet chicks are the metal grid barriers attached to the sides of the nest. Thoughts go out to Mum and Dad, who worked so hard for these chicks. Two dead now.
‘A’ gives us the narrative: “It happened shortly after 12:32. The chick was sitting up, preening, when at 12:32:15 the GHO just swooped in from the left, grabbed one of the two osplets (who were sleeping quite a distance apart from each other rather than in a pile) and took it from the nest.
Lucy had been down on the nest until 12:07, when she flew off the nest, landing on the perch 20 seconds later. She too was awake and preening at the time of the attack, and immediately flew off the perch, following the owl, but returned to the nest 20 seconds later, alarming. She stayed on the nest for a while afterwards but at 03:55:42 she flew off the nest, returned to the nest at 03:56:20 alerting, flew off again at 03:56:30 and returned to the perch just before 03:57, still alerting. She flies off yet again at 03:57:13, landing back on the perch at 03:58:08. She is still alerting. The remaining osplet is asleep on the nest.
It is now about 05:05. Lucy is still on the perch but she appears to have stayed awake since the attack. The remaining osplet is sleeping. Alone. On the nest. It looks very small there now. Dad brought in a nice big whole fish shortly after 06:18 and Lucy fed her remaining osplet. I fear she is simply fattening it up for the GHO.”
There is great news coming out of the Port of Ridgefield. They will be adding, as did Cowlitz PUD, protective grid guards to stop predation from eagles and other raptors on their osprey nest. Now the question is this: Why are not all other nests known to have issues with predation not setting up a plan to do the same? This is a much more economical way to protect the ospreys. It also means that the nest can be inspected and repaired in the off-season or even replaced if necessary. Bravo to the Port of Ridgefield!
They are also going to install baffles on the pole from predators. So give a shout out and a thank you to the Port of Ridgefield and encourage all those nests that have predations to follow their lead! Always remember that Cowlitz PUD started this trend of caring for the ospreys.
The Ospreys are rebuilding at Cartage after the tragedy that killed their chick destroying their nest.
At Captiva:
‘H’ reports that CO7 and C08 have received their names. “CO7 = “Ding” and CO8 – “Darling” Named after the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge in Sanibel.
https://www.fws.gov/refuge/jn-ding-darling
‘H’ also sent us this link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ding_Darling
She also reports: “5/26 was another difficult fishing day. There were four fish delivered to the nest and Edie brought two of them. Ding was a little extra aggressive, and Darling didn’t get that mega-crop that we have seen in previous days. But, Darling did eat. In the four meals, Darling was able to eat for a total of about 28 minutes.”
‘H’ reports also on Forsythe: “5/26 The Forsythe NJ osprey nest of 4 tiny chicks is doing well, so far. Oscar is providing plenty of fish. I’m impressed with Opal’s expertise in feeding the four little babes, and especially the great effort she takes to make sure Mini #4 gets fed.”
‘H’ sends here report on Patuxent. There could be a tragedy at this nest – my words, not ‘H’s if more big fish do not come and Little does not eat. “
5/26 Patuxent-I osprey nest: Although there were 8 meals for the day, things simply did not work out well for ‘Little’. The fish were rather small, and the one large fish that Dad brought was taken away prematurely. The huge fish was delivered at 1119, and Little was prevented from eating. Even Middle was beaking Little to keep him from eating. There should have been plenty of fish left over after Big and Middle ate their fill. While waiting for his turn to eat, Little was across the nest taking advantage of Dad’s shade. When Big and Middle moved away from the table, Dad thought everyone was finished eating, because Little was not up at Mom’s beak. So, Dad removed the large leftover. Little ate a total of 46 bites of fish today, and only 30 bites of fish on Saturday. Little must have a good meal or two today.”
Monty and Hartley’s Fab Four are outside the scrape! What a curious bunch of little falcons this year – at every scrape.
In the mailbox, ‘B’ writes: “I agree with ‘A’ that the bands of the Cal Falcon chicks are often (usually?) difficult to see, and, yes, dark blue can be hard to distinguish from dark green. And the yellow can be hard to pick out. But I can offer clarification regarding “the fourth color”. It would be logical for the fourth color to be red, as ‘A’ presumes it to be, but Cal Falcons now refuses to use red because the color is closely associated with Stanford University, Cal’s rival. I believe that Cal Falcons mentions this in the video of the Q & A session they did on banding day. They have called the fourth color silver or “none”, because it simply means they applied no colored tape over the silver metal band. I believe they used red tape in some previous years, but not recently, and, of course, the fact that there are four chicks this year forced them to use both green and blue, which are harder to distinguish from one another. I do enjoy pointing out that the distinguished Joseph Grinnell, the first director of Cal’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology for whom our beloved Grinnell was named, received all his graduate degrees at Stanford. But I guess the color red is still off limits. The below photo that Cal posted when names were assigned was color-coded according to band color:”
Eclipse is very curious.
Duke Farms Cookie fledged on Sunday! Ready to take off. Both Snickers and Cookie have now fledged.
Fledglings being fed at Venice Golf and Country Club. Flying is difficult and hard and it makes these young ones hungry. Nice to be fed by Mum.
Issues at Dahlgren. New inexperienced parents learning the hard way.
Dorcha needed a break and was away when Louis delivered the third fish on Sunday. In fact, Louis just keeps delivering fish after fish! Way to go…will he deplete the loch?
Where’s your Mum?
Geemeff catches the Bobs battling for top Bob.
We are waiting for hatch at the Niagara Bee Group.
Three precious Bobs of Idris and Telyn. Mum and Dad are buckled down Sunday night with the wind and some rain in Wales.
Oh, they are so cute. CJ7 and Blue 022’s Two Bobs at Poole Harbour. Seriously, is there anything cuter than a little osplet – with its soft natal down – beak wide open wanting some fish? The third egg was cracking as I was settling off to sleep.
Seren blocks the view to the trio at Llyn Clywedog while her and Dylan stay on the nest in the cold wind.
It is not a nice day for Flora and Harry at Alyth and their chicks.
Baby getting a private feeding at the Outerbanks nest of Betsy and Frederick. There will be only two chicks at this nest. The third egg, seen in the top image, was later stepped on and broke. Betsy ate the insides and moved it off.
It is challenging to tell what happened on Sunday in terms of prey. Smallie is getting feathers! They are coming in. So far behind its three older siblings – send your best wishes for this adorable little falcon. You can see those feathers better in the top image.
Montreal falcons doing well.
Anticipating hatch watch at Glaslyn for Elen and Aran soon.
Baby at Maryland Western Shore Old Town Home getting a private feeding.
Watching for changes for Richmond and Rosie’s behaviour.
The story of one of Japan’s falconers who shares his knowledge with a youngster. I was so excited when the link popped up on FB tonight. Link to video is below images.
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/shows/3016163/…
Thank you so much for being with me. Please take care. We hope to see you soon.
Thank you to the following for their notes, posts, comments, videos, and streaming cams that helped me to write my post today: ‘A, B, Geemeff, H, J, L, PB’, Port of Ridgefield, Lake Murray, Patuxent River Park, Forstyhe, Window to Wildlife, fws.gov, Wikipedia, SK Hideaways, Cal Falcons, Duke Farms, VCCCO, Heidi McGrue, The Woodland Trust, Geemeff, Niagara Bee, Dyfi Osprey Project, BoPH, Llyn Clywedog, Alyth SS, OBX Osprey Cam, Amersfoort Falcons, Faucons UdeM, Bywyd Gwylld Glaslyn, Maryland Western Shore Old Town Home, SF Bay Ospreys, and NHK.
Mary Ann, enjoy the visit with your son ☺️❤️🤗
Thank you. I am! Too much food!!!!!!! LOL