Mr Mom.....

Another busy day in the field which began with a few hours of searching again for the newly released chick. I could not locate him. I hope to try again later this week. I moved onto a few nests I haven't visited in quite some time. I ended the day back at our single dads nest. Sadly, I have some bad news to report. I also stopped here yesterday and found two fledged chicks but could not locate the third one. Mr Mom was present and eating a fish himself as the female chick waited quietly next to him for some food. Then he moved over and began to feed her. Sweet. I returned today to try to find that third chick. Two of them were zooming all over the place, fledged successfully! As I searched for number three, my heart sank when I found him hanging dead from a power pole. He must have been electrocuted. It is a disturbing sight that made me nauseous. As I said earlier, when the chicks fledge, they are safer in one way as they can fly away from a predator, but they are also open to a whole new world of trouble. We have  to remember that over 50% of them do not survive the first year. I still view this male as being a remarkable, devoted osprey that did successfully fledge three chicks all on his own. He cared for those chicks heroically since they were about three weeks old. Newly fledged chicks often land in bad places and make bad decisions and some of this is just bad luck. This one is hard to accept because we so wanted this story to finish with a fairy tale ending. As I watched the two beautiful remaining chicks, a male and a female, I saw no sign of Dad in 90 minutes. I am not too worried tho because I think he knows they can fly and they may not need to be guarded quite as much now. He may have been watching from someplace where I couldn't see him. Just the same, I will return to look for him in the next day or two. It's been a tiring week, and I hope I will have some better news this week so we can celebrate the successes!