June 11, 2005
Two-Chick Brood
As we announced earlier in the day, we now have two chicks in our Osprey Cam 2005 nest. The second egg (of the three-egg brood) hatched late Friday afternoon and the third appeared to have hatched during our camera's daily "down time" -- somewhere between 11pm on Friday night and 3am on Saturday morning. One of our loyal cam watchers caught this photo at around 3:30am, and you can see two broken eggshells, showing that the last egg has hatched.
If both chicks make it, it will be advantageous that they were born within 12 hours of each other, as neither chick will have a noticeable size advantage, thus decreasing any potential aggression between the two. Also, it will be easier for the father osprey to feed two rather than three chicks, so food shouldn't be an issue between the siblings.
As we watched the nest today, we saw the mother osprey doing some occasional feeding but also spending a lot of time covering the chicks. Right now the chicks can't regulate their own body temperatures, and the Washington DC area is currently going through an early humid summer heat wave, so the mother osprey has been shading them from the elements. Sometimes we can also see her panting to keep herself cool as she sits out in the sun all day to protect the little ones.
Looking back now at the parents' actions during the last two days, we can see signs that the parents knew what was coming. A mother bird can feel movement and hear chirping before hatching, and it's obvious the father osprey was informed that chicks might be coming. In the last two days, he suddenly started spending more time at the platform with the female, while she in turn started eating from the fish he brought, and behaving more like a homebody.
The chicks will grow rather quickly now and will become easier to see in the nest. But at this point, they're well hidden much of the time due to their size, and also due to the fact that nature camouflages the chicks by giving them earth-toned colors and a white stripe that runs down their back. When they lay low in the nest, the stripe often makes them look like just another stick.
We're very happy that we have a chance at a successful nest this year. And we offer thanks to all those who were keeping watch as we waited for the hatching. Best of luck to the new osprey family.
Technical Note: Just a small camera tip -- sometimes cam watchers might notice that the 30-second refresh does not bring up a different photo. Assuming the cam is working properly, the failure to refresh can sometimes occur because the new image is not ready on the server when the web page refreshes. If that happens, and you see two consecutive photos with the same timestamp, you might try holding down the CTRL key while clicking the Refresh button on your browser toolbar. This will force the browser to get the newest image, and you might be able to bring up the new image you just missed. Note that this will not help if the camera is malfunctioning or we're having major server problems. But if it's a simple case of the browser and the image refresh being out of sync for one cycle, then the CTRL+Refresh will sometimes bring up a missing photo.
Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster