June 12, 2005
The Little Family
We had planned to update the Gallery this weekend, but I've been having email problems, and the emails sent to me earlier today just arrived late this afternoon -- in a very large mass mailing. I've called our tech people to let them know the email server seems to be slow in forwarding them, so hopefully it will get fixed soon. In the meantime, there will be a slight delay in updating the Gallery.
All seems well on the nest as both chicks have been observed feeding. Dad seems to be bringing in the meals, although that doesn't stop Mom from calling after him occasionally.
Thinking back on the hatching we recently witnessed, it reminded me of a chapter in a book I read called, "The Loon: Voice of the Wilderness." In the following passage, author Joan Dunning describes the hatching of a loon chick, and it provides a vivid picture of what our osprey family must have experienced:
"In the moonlight of a warm night in mid-July, the male loon, which is on the nest, stretches his neck forward, opens his bill slightly, and calls the long wail to his mate...In the nest, within one of the downy pouches where he warms the eggs, the male has felt the smallest movement -- hardly there, but undeniable. It is the first pecking...He calls again. The calls resound in the mountains, but his mate is already nearby, cutting a V across the glassy surface of the water.
They speak in soft tones, kwukking...There is the sense that something is to be done, but there is nothing do to but wait. Again the pecking...an insistent, dull tapping from within one of the eggs, a complaint against the dark incurving walls of the shell that limits space. Peck...tap...peck from out of the stillness of twenty-nine days there suddenly arises an urgency, a need for room. The little chick needs to stretch its neck out straight, needs to extend its tiny wings, needs to uncurl its little legs. It is ready to join this world of moonlight and stars, this world of lake water and breezes and blue sky and trees. It needs to breathe.
The big loon hoists himself to one side on the nest, and there, from a small hole on the side of one of the eggs, protrudes a tiny beak. More struggle, more pecking...and resting and pecking...It is so much work for little muscles being used for the first time. Peck...rest...peck...and then finally a side of the shell falls away and there, wet and tired and wavering, is a very small black chick with a little white breast.
The father loon kwuks softly, expressing the bond between himself and this new bit of life before him in the nest. His mate hears the gentle tone and knows there is a chick. But the little chick, for that night, will know nothing more than the warmth to be found beneath a loon's breast."
Welcome to the two additions in our new little family.
Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster