Non breeding pairs...

Well, I have not posted much in the past week. Incubation can be a boring time. I have used the time to try to get bands read...I have now identified 78 birds by their leg bands. There are a few left to go. Some are difficult to view,  some males are scarce and females are hunkered down. I keep trying to catch the changing of the guard, when the males bring a fish for the female and he takes over the incubation duties...but my timing is not always right. I have seen at least six pairs of ospreys in the past week that are STILL not incubating. We are sliding past the window of opportunity now. When you add up a 38-39 day incubation period, 7.5-8 weeks until they fledge and at least a few weeks to learn to fish on their own, independent of their parents, you can see that chicks which hatch late have a poor chance of being adequately prepared to undertake their first migration in September. I am curious about why some pairs have not laid eggs. Some may have paired up with a female that is not sexually mature and is therefore not receptive to copulation attempts. ( Many females are unbanded so we do not know their ages). There may be other reasons for not laying eggs too...weather, nest removal that required extensive rebuilding, and some reasons we may not fully understand. We expected this rapidly growing reintroduced population of ospreys to level off at some point, but had no idea how that might look. Perhaps we will  begin to see more non breeding pairs.  We call these pairs "housekeepers".