99 degrees!

It’s a stinking hot day out there today and I was out there until I could no longer bear it. Those Ospreys get no respite tho, until evening. I watched those females valiantly trying to shade their chicks. Thank goodness it is quite windy today which helps a bit. The temp at my house now is 99 with a dew point of 70. Uff da. The adults and the older chicks can handle this heat if it is not prolonged. The newly hatched chicks tho, and we do have some, cannot thermoregulate at this point and this is an extreme stress for them. I am hoping they all survive, but we wont know because they are still too small to count. It’s important that they stay hydrated and the only fluid they recieve is from the fish they eat. We have some wonderful devoted males who are great at providing, and fish are abundant in Minnesota, so we can remain hopeful. I am now busy counting chicks on nests, and tho we wondered if the late spring would produce smaller broods, I am seeing many three chick nests, but also some failures. Time will tell what the overall counts are.