Egg!

 Well there was an egg laid at the Arboretum cam nest today….which baffles me as I have seen the female refuse copulation SO many times. But when I looked closer….at the dorsal feather patterns, I see two different females!

Can you see the difference? I see many differences….but look at the area above the right eye ( from our perspective) at what I call the eye brow in the top photo…..there is a lot more white and very little dark between the eye and the top dark patch on the female who was there several weeks ago. The female that laid the egg today has much darker eyebrows, and less white between her eye and her dark top patch on top of her head. The dorsal pattern on top of her head is also a different shape. I also see the female we had earlier did not have a dark extension of her top patch almost down to her beak as the female who is there today does.

I am not sure when the females changed. I know I have seen three different unbanded females on the nest this season. And I know that one of them was refusing to copulate, and that is also the one who seemed to trigger defensive reactions from the male. I have been so busy with other situations, checking nests further away, finding new nests (8 so far), searching for missing birds and reading bands.

Time will tell what happens next….they have not brought many sticks to the nest, so what is there, mostly grasses and cornstalks, may just blow away when we have strong winds or a storm.

We also sadly lost another banded male. He was found on the ground and taken to TRC where he died….mostly likely from the severe internal injuries he had. He was a young male, probably breeding for the first time this year as we had not seen him in previous years. Every loss is heart breaking.