16 November 2022
Oh, good morning to everyone! I hope that you are all well. If you have not been watching the scrape of Diamond and Xavier you are really missing something. First, there is the adorable Indigo and Rubus. They are ‘not sweet’ when it comes to prey items as the following two videos will demonstrate! But, they will be ‘out there’ defending their own prey and these little dust ups help them prepare for that. In the first video Rubus really does a good job at snatching that small prey item. He doesn’t prevail in the end but watch closely what he does. Quite the character.
Rest assured that at the end of the day, both eyases had quite enough to eat and at times were even sharing prey items.
So this is the first prey delivery, a small piece.
The second is a much more substantial bird, a Galah (pink and grey). There was more than enough for both eyases.
The fish deliveries continue to be rather scarce at Port Lincoln. It is difficult to determine if there has been an actual drop in the prey delivered or a slow down due to the imminent fledgling of Zoe and not three rapidly growing osplets. There are too many factors – the weight of the fish delivery, the portions that each family member ate, etc. It appears that at the current delivery rate, Mum, Dad, and Zoe are each getting the equivalent to one small fish per day. Is this enough?
Hoping for another fish but nothing has arrived. Mum appears to be reluctant to get too far away from the nest. Did the intrusion of the humans to band and put the sat pak on Zoe cause her stress? Is she afraid to leave Zoe? Quite possibly. Perhaps she will go fishing tomorrow but, for now it seems that she is relying on Dad.
The ospreys are not moving about much, not exerting much energy. Today, however, Zoe is doing a lot of wingersizing. Her wings are gorgeous. Just look at how big they are! It will be those big wings that will pull Zoe up out of the water when she catches her fish.
This shows what those strong wings will be doing. Just imagine. Zoe will have to catch her own fish until such time as she has a mate and has eggs in the nest.
AND THEN…a whopper of a fish arrived. Mum ate her fill and then took the fish to Zoe. Everyone will go to bed with a full crop at Port Lincoln. Relief.
Mum did not part with the fish when Dad arrived more than an hour later to see if there was any left. This whopper should take care of the hunger that she was experiencing – and Zoe. (I do hope that Dad had a fish, too).
Making News:
Even in Manitoba we are experiencing some birds that are late to migrate or who have decided to check it out and see what it is like in the winter for food. Some of those are Cardinals. This is an osprey in Idaho though! They need water and fish as we all know. Why so late?
Project Eagle will be the new home of the American Eagle Foundation The facility is located in Kodak, Tennessee and is set on 57 acres. Challenger the Eagle will be in residence there.
In the Mailbox:
‘M’ introduced me to an Australian photographer, Georgina Steeler. All of this relates again to how we perceive our wonderful feathered friends and other wildlife. We have been having this discussion about anthropomorphising birds. We need people to care, to help all of us, to add to the numbers so that we build a huge network. At the same time, we need to recognise and educate ourselves about the emotions that wildlife have so we can try and have an intelligent conversation with the non-believers.
I urge you to Goggle Georgina Steytler and go and see her website, read her blog, look at her photographs, and ponder all the ways that you can make a difference. Oh, I like this woman and the way she thinks!
Here is one of the quotes on her site today from one of my heroines, Jane Goodall who knows that wildlife have and show emotion, pain, anger, fear, grief, and joy.
‘D’ sent me the link to this story to share with all of you. After reading about Wolke, this is another story of how much our feathered friends enrich our lives as told through budgies:
When I wrote about the Red Listed Bird, The European Starling, I had no idea Starlings were so intelligent and could mimic anything including Mozart’s concerto. Birds and their intelligence fascinate me more and more. ‘F and M’ sent me a note telling me about an incident at the Taronga Zoo in Sydney. They wrote, “A week or so ago Tooronga Zoo in Sydney Australia had a breakout from the lion’s enclosure causing an alarm and the instruction “EVACUATE NOW” to sound. The lyrebird is now mimicking this alarm and instruction. It is causing quite a problem at the zoo. !!” Enjoy!
No 7 The Red List: The Dotterel
The top image is of the male Dotterel. Notice that beautiful white eye line and belly with the grey brown and espresso feathers mingled with white on the head, wings and back.
“Northern NZ dotterel.” by Bernard Spragg is marked with CC0 1.0.
This is the female. In this instance the female Dotterel has the brighter plumage than the male. The female has the same grey-brown plumage on the back of the head, wings, and back but look at that magnificent chestnut apron! With the espresso necklace and line between the eyes forming a brown and the espresso line running from the beak under the eye. What a beauty.
“Banded dotterel” by Andrej Chudy is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
The Dotterel is a medium sized member of the Plover family measuring approximately 20-22 cm in length. The birds are unusual in that it is the female that has the brighter plumage rather than the male. They live on insects and worms. Their eggs take 28-32 days to incubate and during this entire time the female does not leave the nest to feed. She is fed by her mate.
Dotterel face a number of threats from predators that have been introduced into their environment particularly during the nesting and breeding season. These include dogs, hedgehogs, cats, rats, stoats as well as other larger birds, and humans.
Thank you so very much for being with me today. Do stop in and watch Indigo and Rubus. You will not be disappointed! Take care. See you soon.
Thank you to the following for their postings and streaming cams where I took my screen shots: Port Lincoln Ospreys, Openverse, Charles Sturt Falcon Cam and Cilla Kinross, American Eagle Foundation, Montana Ospreys at Hellgate, Georgina Steytler. I would also like to thank those that sent in news items today: ‘M, D, F and M’. Much appreciated! It is always lovely to get mail to share with everyone.