July 10, 2005
Chick Aggression
First, we want to announce that we plan to start the Osprey Chick-Naming Contest in the next day or two. Again, it will he hosted by Wildcam.com. We'll post an official announcement on both sites when the contest goes live.
Just a side note -- although I sometimes refer to the chicks as "he" in the Web Log, at this time we cannot tell the gender of the chicks, and we won't know their gender before they leave for South America in late August.
As for nest news, starting Saturday, we noticed that the oldest chick has suddenly become much more aggressive towards the youngest chick. He has been moving towards the youngest in an attempt to intimidate him and prevent him from feeding, although it doesn't appear to be life-threatening and the youngest chick is still getting chances to feed.
We're not sure what caused this increase in aggression. Up until yesterday, the chicks were only exhibiting a small amount of sibling rivalry, but something changed. It's possible the youngest started it. Sometimes the youngest chick will decide he's tired of eating last and will become more aggressive himself. This will cause the oldest to attack the youngest to teach him a lesson about who is first.
The mother is not interfering with the fighting, as is normal, although Sunday morning she did try to move the food to the side of the nest where the youngest was so he could get his fair share, but the oldest chick would have none of that, and he went after the youngest again. Finally, on the second feeding, the youngest got to feed after the oldest was full.
Chick aggression can increase and decrease at different intervals, and since the youngest is healthy and strong, we are not overly concerned at this time. We hope that the aggression will diminish and the mother will continue to make an effort to get food to them both.
A couple cam watchers have asked if we would ever intervene, and the answer would be no. We treat our cam nests as if they are nests that we are not watching. Nature is allowed to play out as it normally would. The only times we would step in is if a chick fell out of the nest or if the nest itself was in any kind of danger of falling. Otherwise, nature goes on.
Again, we're hoping that the aggression will decrease and things will go about as before, where both chicks coexisted more calmly. As a reminder, they are now 4 weeks old and are only about 3 weeks from flying.
Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster