Five bites…

 From what I have seen the tiny Arb chick has gotten five bites of fish all day today. It’s a start. It’s been difficult to watch. The female almost seems afraid to feed the chick. But some progress was made today….its driven me to drink and I am having a cocktail now. My whole body tenses up as I watch. Whew. I hope more food gets in this evening….tho we are now under a tornado watch. Think good thoughts people….lots of good thoughts.

As I said earlier….sometimes cam watching and osprey watching requires great fortitude.

At the nest with the single mom, whose mate had two nests and ultimately abandoned her completely….we have lost one chick this week. Mom is now caring for just one chick. I watched her leave the chick for less than two minutes and come back with a tiny fish that they shared. She was probably unable to provide enough for two….but I hope she can bring this little one to fledge. She did it last year. I have watched so many heroic struggles for life…and my heart has broken a million times. And yet we celebrate the joys of success when they occur.

We are seeing many failures….about ten nests so far and I am still making the rounds to count chicks. Very few three chick nests, and some that had three last week, only have two this week. Sigh.

But today I am sending all my good thoughts to little Arb…cmon, buddy. This little one has done everything right….lifting its head and opening its tiny beak…..we can hear it trying to food beg. Mom, get your shit together….that little being is counting on you!

I suspect she may be very young….when I have watched the rare two year old females that have bred successfully, they also acted this incompetent. But both times they did end up raising one chick to fledge. You can see she has the instinct to feed, but she falters in the execution. Hopefully, having gotten a few bites in today, it will seem less daunting to her. The chick spins in circles cause he isnt sure where she is, and she struggles with the approach and the transfer. Fingers crossed…..let the storms fizzle, let all your good thoughts support this little family.

Hmmmmm

 There are concerns that the female is not feeding the chick at the Arb cam nest. Cam watching is not for the faint of heart. Behaviors can be hard to understand. Watching the female as she ate, she hesitated with a bite of fish in her beak and her head seemed to search for the chick….but she did not move closer to the chick to facilitate feeding. Many years ago I watched a banded two year old female osprey who hatched a chick struggle with feeding….she was so young and didn’t seem to know what to do when the egg hatched. Luckily, the male was also a banded experienced male and he took over and started feeding the chick, seemingly showing her how to do it and eventually she did “get it” and started feeding. But this male may also be young and inexperienced. He seemed confused as he watched her and watched the chick. There is a stimulation- response thing going on….the chick needs to stand up and ask for food, which he was doing this morning. Many first time breeders do fail, and maybe this is why. We have seen this before on this nest, and it’s happened on other nests. I expressed concerns earlier in how they were leaving the egg uncovered in the rain. We will see if her brain will connect the dots and do what needs to be done.…or if the male will step up and do some feeding. It can be very frustrating to watch.

I did read a very interesting book about bird senses and it talked about their vision, which is obviously very good when hunting….but because their eyes do not move in the socket like ours do, focusing their eyes on the spot right at the tip of their beak is difficult. Clearly most ospreys can and do feed chicks, but the way she seemed to be searching for the chick with a bite of fish in her beak made me wonder.

HATCHED!

 WE HAVE A HATCH AT THE ARB CAM NEST!

You can see the chick beneath mom ( zoom in) and in the second shot you can see there is part of an eggshell above her. It was cute the way Dad came and laid down on the eggshell next to mom. I tell ya sometimes the males behavior gives it away to me….he was there walking around the nest, sitting next to mom etc…and apparently this surviving egg was the probably the third one laid, hatching four days after the first one should have hatched. So break out the champagne!

If you scroll back on the live feed to about 6 a.m. and watch the males behavior….they do get excited and interested...I think the chick hatched about 6:15-6:20. Enjoy! (You can only scroll back for about 12 hours so check it out if you want to see the event….)

What’s up at the Arb?

 For those looking for updates on what is happening on the Arboretum Osprey cam….we have entered the window for hatching. During the early days of the reintroduction project that I worked on, we had so few nests that I was able to check them all every day. It was during this period that we determined that most of the time eggs hatch on day 39 of incubation. The earliest restoration project in Pennsylvania also came to the same determination. I helped put up the current Nestpole with Xcel energy way back in 2001 and have been monitoring it ever since. Ospreys originally tried to build a nest on an active power pole, so that power pole was retrofitted to prevent nesting and this current Nestpole was erected just for them. The ospreys were circling as we put up the pole and when it was up and we moved away, the ospreys landed on it immediately! It has been occupied every year since tho the occupants have changed.

This nest has had some difficulty in recent years with many changes to the ospreys that have settled there. ( I have the entire history of who the birds were every year since we put up the Nestpole.) The pair this year are new and both are unbanded so we know nothing about their history. It is unknown how old they are, and this may be their first breeding attempt. They have already run into problems when two eggs were tossed out of the nest cup (covered in an earlier post). They have continued to incubate the one egg that remained in the center of the nest, and ignored the one that was now lying outside the nest cup. In recent days I have noticed that they are sometimes leaving the remaining viable egg uncovered, even in the rain. The embryo undergoes rapid growth towards the end of incubation so it’s far more troubling to see an egg uncovered at this stage of development than earlier in the incubation process. How much time uncovered is too much is unknown. We will see. I also observed the male copulating with the female yesterday which is also unusual for this stage of breeding. In my 32 years of experience watching these birds, I have seen them start copulating again when they know a nest is failing….as if they know something has gone wrong and they want to start over. I don’t know if this nest is failing or not, but these are just some behavioral observations I thought you might be interested in. I also noted that the female has sometimes been eating on the nest, which is not the normal place for them to eat during incubation. Usually when the male,brings a fish to the incubating female, she takes it and leaves to eat, many times just to the perch on the Nestbox. The male incubates in her absense. They usually only begin eating on the nest when chicks have hatched or are hatching. So we have some very mixed messages on this nest.

With Ospreys, eggs are laid sequentially, about 2-3 days apart. Egg laying takes a lot of energy and laying them a few days apart allows the female to recoup some of her energy in between eggs. Ospreys usually begin incubating from the day the first egg is laid. This means that the eggs will also hatch sequentially, ( asynchronous hatching) which sets up a hierarchy in the ages of the chicks with the third chick significantly younger and smaller, and puts younger siblings at a disadvantage. The latest hatched chick is more likely to die in the nest, which has been seen on this nest. But it also gives the older chick a headstart and increases its chance of survival to adulthood, especially if food supply is unpredictable. Some ospreys do use a strategy called delayed incubation, which means they do not begin full time incubation until all eggs are laid. This will cause eggs to hatch closer together, ( synchronous hatching). Many birds delay incubation until all eggs are laid but ospreys usually do not. There is a lot written about asynchronous vs synchronous hatching….too much to go in to here. Feel free to google that! I will put a link to a great article about it below…

Having explained all that, we only have one egg and it is not known if it was the first, second or third egg laid….so it’s harder to know when it should hatch. Day 39 has passed, so we will wait and watch to see if it hatches later. So stay tuned! I just thought some of this info might help people understand and enjoy watching this nest.

https://scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk/2021/05/what-is-asynchronous-hatching-and-why-do-ospreys-hatch-their-eggs-days-apart/

Overdue update

 So much going on in the osprey world here in Minnesota…and I am having a hard time keeping up and finding time to answer emails or write posts here! Yeah, you hear it every year and every year it gets worse. We have ten new nests already and a lot of nests that have been inactive in recent years are now active again. So we are seeing a rise in the number of nests to monitor, without an equal increase in the number of volunteer monitors….so you know who takes up the slack!

I was able to finally confirm that we had a male going between two nests early on, and yet when his original mate finally laid eggs, he abandoned the new mate, who had laid eggs first. He did help the new mate incubate at first, like he was hedging his bets. (His original female had been late in returning). She is a female who lost her mate mid season last year, after chicks had hatched. She managed to care for one chick to fledge successfully. We thought she had found a new, and good mate but now she finds herself alone again….and this time she had to get thru much of the incubation phase on her own. She would leave to get a fish and quickly return , often to wolf down a fish perched just outside the nest. Now she has hatched her chicks. I saw her leave the wee ones for 3 minutes and return with a small fish. Will she be able to pull this off? I have checked her again and she has survived the first two weeks of being a mom and we are seeing two chicks so far. Many of you may be watching the Hellgate osprey nest cam in Montana where the female, Iris, has faced a similar situation for many years. But she was never able to protect the eggs on her own to get them to hatch as our female has. Her eggs were repeatedly predated by Ravens. So this goes to show how strong this female is, and caring for chicks alone has been her lot in life. I know this may not have a happy ending….but I will keep watching. She is a tough cookie and we are rooting for her.

We had another male that seemed to be going between two nests, and in that case he seemed to choose the new mate and new territory , neglecting his original nest….and as is often the case, that nest has failed. That female gave up. Not many females can pull this off alone.

We are starting to see a lot of failed nests too….many of them failing for unknown reasons. Some have not laid eggs, and are just housekeepers. Some have laid eggs but something happened to the eggs along the way. Some appear to be incubating too long without a hatch. (infertile or damaged eggs) Some have been displaced by humans removing their nests and they have struggled to find a new place to rebuild. I am spending a lot of time trying to read bands to document the movements of some of these birds when possible. I read the band on a female at a new nest, and later that day was able to read a band on a male not too far away. When I looked the band numbers up I discovered that was a mother and son! Most of our birds are unbanded now, but when there is a band to read, I work hard at reading it and some bands are harder to read than others. Woof.

Good news/bad news…

 Well it’s a good news /bad news kind of day. First the bad news…..overnight two of the arboretum cam nest eggs ended up out of the nest cup. I don’t know how the first one got out there….but it looked cracked to me and may have been unfertilized. Later in the day it got stepped on and cracked further into small pieces ( seen above the female in the first photo). The second egg ended up in the lower left corner very suddenly and I watched the video over and over to figure it out….i think when the male came with a fish, and the female got up to get it, the egg may have been stuck to her belly feathers…and then it dropped off where she was standing with the fish. It remains there. The nest cup looks wet and muddy, so that may explain why it stuck to her. It’s sad, but we hope the remaining egg will be ok. So the first photo is of the Arb cam nest. Other photos from another nest.

The good news….our two first nests have begun hatching! I was at one nest this morning while it was still foggy and drizzling….and only 43 degrees. The male was sticking very close by….and he would only leave to get more nest material. Sadly some of it was landscape fabric. I wish people would be more careful with what they leave laying on the ground. When the female got up to look beneath, the male stood next to her and stared into the nest cup. Sweet. Then when she settled back into incubation / brooding, he snuggled down right next to her! He was not sitting on eggs, but he was giving her moral support! This is our oldest banded male now….20 years old! Ya gotta love this guys attentiveness, and care. The photos are horrible but maybe you can make out two heads in one image and then another one where they are both staring down into the nest.

Then I went on to another nest where the adults were pretty darn interested in what was happening in the nest cup! I did not see a feeding yet….but I know these touching signs that something special is happening!

May 19, 2025…

 There is a lot going on behind the scenes as we try to deal with some issues….dangerous situations for ospreys that need to be addressed. It takes time to evaluate situations and behaviors, decide what would be best for the birds, and contact proper authorities for help. We have already found ten new nests! I am trying to identify (banded or not banded) all birds, and read the bands that I have found. It takes a lot of time. And tomorrow the window opens for our earliest nests to begin hatching….

It’s fun when I find new young birds that are offspring of some of our older, banded birds! So many generations of ospreys!
I am also still searching for some birds who had their nests removed and were seen briefly….but where did they go?
I hope my readers will let me know if new nests pop up….keep your eyes on cell towers, power lines, ballfield lights.
As the population grows we also need more nest monitors….so If you have a spotting scope, are able to commit to checking one or more nests weekly, and would like to get involved, please shoot me an email at osprey.mn@gmail.com. We have a list of guidelines to direct your observations as we try to collect the same data on all nests.
We are already seeing some potential problems, failures. I was watching a nest that had two adults a few weeks ago, but last weekend I watched for many hours and never saw the male. This weekend again, I saw no male and the female left the nest to get a fish and she wolfed it down perched on the nest edge before she hopped back into the nest to resume incubation. This doesn’t look good. On another nest we have a female incubating, but we don’t ever see a male helping her. We believe this might be a situation where one male was attending two nests, but since eggs have been laid, he is primarily attending to only one nest. This is often the outcome of these polygynous situations. One nest will be the primary nest and will get most of the males attention and eventually the other nest will fail. We are trying to document this, but a male that is rarely there, can be very hard to identify! I am wondering if the nest where the female left to get her own fish may be in the same situation. Does her “mate” have another nest? I run back and forth and spend hours trying to identify these males to confirm my suspicions. If males are banded, we can prove what is occurring, but if they aren’t banded, it can be more difficult.
We are continuing to see the population develop into loose colonies….ospreys attract other ospreys, so new nests pop up between two other nests! And the closeness of nests can provide more opportunities for males to spread their DNA! It’s just instinct, folks! We must remember that the two driving forces of these birds is to survive, and to reproduce!
I am sure we will be announcing our first hatches very soon!