May 06, 2006
Egg Update & Fun Stuff
Nest Update: The eggs are about two weeks away from the start of hatching. All four eggs are still present and seem to be intact. Tom Miller, our wonderful ranger, is around the Visitor Center during different parts of the day, and he gets to occasionally see the Osprey Cam TV monitor where we have the live video feed. Tom says that you can see the parents sometimes struggle to get all four eggs under them for proper incubation.
What this means is that there is a chance one or two of the eggs might not get all the heat they need to produce a viable chick. So we wouldn't be surprised to see an egg or two not hatch. This wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if the chick was going to hatch very late or struggle for food in a crowded nest. We would rather see the egg not hatch than see a fourth chick succumb to sibling aggression or starvation in the first couple weeks after hatching.
But at this time, all the eggs are there, so we'll hope for the best. Like all our cam watchers, those of us at the Refuge are unsure about just what will happen come May 19 and the week that follows, since we've never had four eggs at the cam nest. We'll just have to sit back and let nature be our guide.
Fun Stuff
Bob Quinn, a talented refuge photographer, sent me some photos he just took of our resident Blackwater ospreys. The first shot shows our cam pair on the platform. The next two photos show a different osprey couple on a water platform. And the final shot shows a flying osprey. Click on the thumbnails for larger versions. And much thanks to Bob for sharing these with us.
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Also, in my last post I mentioned how funny it is to watch when one of the osprey parents is sitting on the eggs and does not want to get up to let the other parent take over. KimMarie is one of our cam watchers, but she is also an integral part of the Buffalo Peregrine Falcon Cam in New York. KimMarie sent me a short animated GIF file showing how her falcon parents sometimes exhibit the same behavior as our ospreys. In the clip below, the mother wants to take over the incubating duties, but the dad isn't in a hurry to vacate the nest. You can almost hear the conversation they might be having if they could talk. :-)
Falcon Changeover (800 KB)
If you have a slower Internet connection, give the movie a couple minutes to load. Much thanks to KimMarie for sharing her nest clip.
And finally I'd like to share a couple links that our cam watchers might enjoy. First, be sure to check out this amazing osprey website from France. The site should be in English, but if it's not, click on the little British flag in the upper right-hand corner to see the English version. And be sure to go to the Gallery section where they have a beautiful collection of osprey sketches, photos, and video clips.
Also, I'm a bit of a hummingbird fan, and someone pointed me to a site where they have photos of nesting hummingbirds. The galleries below show two different nesting seasons featuring Allen's Hummingbirds. At the end of each gallery page, click on the "next page" link to see more photos. The adult is about 3-4 inches long and the eggs are the size of jelly beans! Amazing to think that some species of hummingbirds migrate thousands of miles each year. Nature is truly a miraculous thing.
Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster
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