A threesome?

Life remains pretty darn interesting in the Osprey world! I am still documenting a lot of musical nests....birds moving around, some still waiting for a mate, or looking for a mate. I am finding nests that have been unused for several years are suddenly reoccupied, have found several new nests already this year as well. Today I found a nest with two females and a male on it! The females were coexisting peacefully, one had a fish, the other was just waiting calmly as the male ate a fish nearby. I did not see any copulation, which might have given me some clues about what is actually occurring. Is there just an extra female being tolerated temporarily by a bonded pair....or is it really a threesome, with both females getting food and copulating with the male? Hmmmmm. I visited a lot of nests and covered 120+ miles, read some bands and found a lot of unbanded birds. Yesterday I revisited the single dad and found him still hanging around with the new female. I have not seen them copulate successfully yet but I am hopeful tho!
There are still so many bands to read and the light is just not cooperating. I really need some cool cloudy days to help me get the bands documented. I am finding more and more nests that have laid eggs. There are so many nests that I have not even gotten to once this year....my time has been so limited lately. I know we have a lot of new readers who may be looking for basic information so do feel free to ask questions! The books say that Ospreys incubate between 35-43 days and many years ago, when I had only a few nests to watch, I determined that they most often hatch on day 39. Researchers in Pennsylvania also arrived at the same number. Of course there can be some variation, especially if the first egg does not hatch. I see that osprey researchers in other places have come up with a slightly different number. During this phase, both male and female will incubate so we watch for the changing of the guard. Usually when the male brings a fish, the female will take it and leave to eat her fish nearby. The male will then take over the incubation duties. In fact one of the tell tale signs that hatching has begun is that the female will NOT leave with the fish, but will begin taking small bites and leaning into the nest cup to feed the wee ones that can’t be seen at first. So this is a behavior to pay attention to....the alternating of incubators, so that when this behaviors changes, we can recognize the early signs of hatching.