August 23, 2005
Mother Not Gone?
I hadn't planned on doing another web log post so soon, but the events of Monday seemed to require it.
Early Monday morning, Lightning was seen leaving the nest several times, which gave us hope that finally he was going to go out and try to catch a meal. We didn't see him actually eating, but still there was hope.
Then late in the afternoon, we briefly caught a glimpse of two adults -- looking like a male and a female -- land on the nest with Lightning. I'm not positive, but from the photos it looked like one of them brought the chick a fish, because suddenly Lightning was eating.
The male adult left quickly but the adult that looked like a female hung around while Lightning was munching on his fish. The female looked similar to our mother osprey in that she had what appeared to be a very light necklace.
Lightning did not respond to the adult and instead continued eating while occasionally showing a mantling posture ("mantling" is when a raptor spreads its wings, fans its tail, and arches over the prey to hide it from other predators). We can't blame Lightning for not paying much attention to the adult as he was likely very hungry and only interested in eating.
After a while the adult female left and then Thunder arrived. Thunder waited a bit and then tried to get a piece of Lightning's meal, but Lightning did a pretty good job of keeping Thunder away, again showing a mantling posture, although it looked like eventually Thunder got a piece. Evening then came, and we didn't see any adults on the nest again.
So the question is -- was this female-looking adult our mother osprey? Many of the female ospreys at Blackwater have likely started migrating, so that limits the number of females around, and not many females have the light necklace that ours has. In addition, the male osprey didn't seem to mind that this adult was sitting on the nest with Lightning, further indicating that it was probably our mother osprey.
Finally, I had a cam watcher who visited the platform Sunday report that she saw what looked like the father osprey "play" flying with another bird in the area of the nest on Sunday.
If these have been sightings of the mother, where has she been if she hasn't been heading south? We honestly don't know. We can guess that maybe disappearing for a while was her way of forcing the young to start taking care of themselves -- especially Lightning who in the past has been reluctant to leave. But are we giving the osprey parents too much credit? Or was this a bit of sophisticated osprey parenting?
Ultimately we may never know for sure. At this point we can only wait and see if she shows up again, and that may depend on how effective Lightning is at finding food. So we'll continue to watch and wonder if the mother osprey is hanging back but still keeping an eye on the young.
For now I'll save the migration post I had planned for a later web log since we're not sure if the family has actually started migrating. Thanks to all those who sent in photos of the parenting action -- we got good coverage. :-)
Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster