Hard work….

 I wonder if any of you know how hard I work to gather all this data and check all these nests! Today I tackled a handful of nests I have to hike in to view…..some thru weeds up to my arm pits! ( next duty: woodtick check) The mosquitoes are unbearable in some places after all the rain we have had. Lordy, even long pants, long sleeves and a headnet are not enough! Note to self….wear gloves!!!!! 

And of course I have to remain hidden so the female won’t see me, give an alarm call, causing the chicks to pancake so I can’t count them!  And hauling a scope and tripod that weigh a lot makes it more difficult. But still, there are rewards! Being alone  in natural places, so peaceful. Being able to quiet my mind and just listen. And to have the ospreys reveal their secrets to me. Now, after such a difficult time in my personal life that kept me away from the ospreys for too long….I have finally visited every nest at least once…..some several times and some many times. I am filling in the holes on my working charts. Still a lot of  work to do, bands to read, chicks to count. And another huge task is those nests that used to be active, and where at least one osprey was seen this spring…but are now empty. Where did they go? Of course this is a needle in a haystack kind of thing….but I try to find them. Some have had their nests removed and I want to know what happened to them. It’s that damn curiousity thing. I have been traveling over 100 miles a day for quite a while now, trying to catch up. It drains my bank account quickly. 

A few updates….we now appear to have three single females….and two of those, whose mate died, have attracted a new male that is bringing fish! This is not something I used to see, but now perhaps with an increased population and more males looking for a good territory and mate…its is happening. They do not ever directly feed the chicks, but they drop a fish for the female (courtship) and they do defend the territory from other males….at least partially. One of the single females seems to just be alone….but we will keep watching and see what evolves. It’s interesting stuff. 

There have been some losses….nests failed, chicks gone. But the numbers do not seem unusually high. Still, it’s always sad. And we have a couple of nests that appear to still be incubating….which at this late date, probably means they are sitting on eggs that are not viable. They have a hard time giving up sometimes. And so do I….on lots of things. 

I know I am way behind on answering emails….bear with me. Gotta get the data, that’s the most important thing to me….and write a post here occasionally….and I will get around to emails on a rainy day!