This is the rest of the story of purple banded J4 from Iowa, the freeway nest female...it occurred to me that many of you like to hear these life stories of various Ospreys. In my last post I touched on some of J4's history, so here is the rest, the prequel! She initially came to nest on that very tall freeway light in 2005. She was with a banded male whose band was not read...not for lack of trying tho! During the incubation period he was observed having difficulty breathing and struggled to haul sticks up to the nest. He would gasp for air in a behavior that is called "gaping". Its not a good sign. Raptors are vulnerable to an illness called aspergillosis, which is a fungal lung disease which can be stress related. Don't know if this was his problem. At any rate he disappearred after I observed his difficulties and he was presumed dead. This left J4 incubating those eggs alone with no male to bring her fish. She food begged loudly everytime another Osprey flew by and eventually she did attract another male, KM ( hatched on the Arsenal nest in 2001). He was interested in copulating and would eventually bring her a fish , but when she left the nest with the fish to eat, he would not sit on those eggs which were not his. The eggs were left uncovered too much and they died. So the nest failed that first year, but KM and J4 did bond and remained together at that nest though the 2010 nesting season. They produced 13 chicks together. Sadly last year, he did not return. J4 returned from her long migration to her nest being gone and no mate. She did find a new unbanded male and they settled at the nestpole near Gleason Rd and 62 on Creek Valley Elementary School grounds and dealt with all the stresses of that nest site as described in the earlier post. And now she is alone again and we are waiting to see if she can find another mate or if her unbanded male will eventually show up. Because she was hacked out ( I will describe the hacking process in another post) in the Iowa reintroduction project, she is more accustomed to humans than some other Ospreys and seems able to handle the activity level at that site, but not all Ospreys will. Hope she can find a male who is tolerant of people. Wish her luck!