Dreaded baling twine....

There have been some ups and downs in the osprey world. Sadly I discovered a dead chick hanging from the edge of a nest, tangled in baling twine. It is so disturbing to see. We try to get the word out about the dangers of baling twine but I am afraid that the people who need to see it, are not reading my page. I imagine it is a miserable way to die. On a happier note I visited the nest of our oldest male and was thrilled to see that he has two chicks in his nest! We have never had a male that old breed successfully. In fact we have noted a drop in productivity in some older males, which may reflect a drop in fertility. At any rate, I continue to be pleasantly surprised by our 23 year old males robust nesting activity. He is often near the nest, and providing well for his family. A new record has been set! We are continuing to work hard on gathering our early chick counts so we can monitor mortality rates. There seem to be many large three chick nests, tho the nest failures are mounting as well. So far the failure rate is not abnormally high but every week I seem to find another nest or two empty. Some pairs have simply given up on eggs that are infertile and therefore not hatching. At some nests I have seen evidence of hatching /feeding and later find the nest empty, with no idea what caused the chicks to die. I am still working on getting the remaining bands read. I did get a few difficult bands read last week and hope to get a few more challenging ones this week. I spent 3.5 hours at one nest trying to get a males band read! He is such an attentive male that he is always standing in the middle of the nest, watching his offspring, where I cannot see his band! But he finally cooperated with me a bit and by watching closely between the sticks, I was able to identify him. I have a few more of those to go and may have to devote an entire day to get those final bands read! I never give up! I often learn a lot about behavior and the personalities of the birds when I spend long periods there trying to get a band number.