June 13 tidbits...

Today's tidbits...here it is mid June and many nests have still not hatched. It is becoming clear, slowly, that some nests won't hatch. They seem to give up slowly, after incubating too long, and oddly enough it is often the females who give up first, while the males will continue to incubate. Eggs are left uncovered for increasing lengths of time as they slowly seem to realize that the eggs will never hatch. On the other side of things I was able to observe some fairly big chicks today...fully two weeks old. Bopping around on the nest, pecking at each other, reaching out for food and toddling to the edge of the nest to look around at their world. I love that. Taking in the landscape called HOME. I found a missing pair of ospreys today YEAH! Am still seeing a lot of extra ospreys visiting established nests, bothering the residential pair, trying to land, getting chased off. Those males have to be vigilant about defending the territory. One volunteer got some great photos of just such a skirmish and we we able to ID the visiting pair as being from another nest that had failed. Interesting to see how they move around, and how they behave when they have no chicks to raise. Making a little trouble in this case.