Overdue update

 So much going on in the osprey world here in Minnesota…and I am having a hard time keeping up and finding time to answer emails or write posts here! Yeah, you hear it every year and every year it gets worse. We have ten new nests already and a lot of nests that have been inactive in recent years are now active again. So we are seeing a rise in the number of nests to monitor, without an equal increase in the number of volunteer monitors….so you know who takes up the slack!

I was able to finally confirm that we had a male going between two nests early on, and yet when his original mate finally laid eggs, he abandoned the new mate, who had laid eggs first. He did help the new mate incubate at first, like he was hedging his bets. (His original female had been late in returning). She is a female who lost her mate mid season last year, after chicks had hatched. She managed to care for one chick to fledge successfully. We thought she had found a new, and good mate but now she finds herself alone again….and this time she had to get thru much of the incubation phase on her own. She would leave to get a fish and quickly return , often to wolf down a fish perched just outside the nest. Now she has hatched her chicks. I saw her leave the wee ones for 3 minutes and return with a small fish. Will she be able to pull this off? I have checked her again and she has survived the first two weeks of being a mom and we are seeing two chicks so far. Many of you may be watching the Hellgate osprey nest cam in Montana where the female, Iris, has faced a similar situation for many years. But she was never able to protect the eggs on her own to get them to hatch as our female has. Her eggs were repeatedly predated by Ravens. So this goes to show how strong this female is, and caring for chicks alone has been her lot in life. I know this may not have a happy ending….but I will keep watching. She is a tough cookie and we are rooting for her.

We had another male that seemed to be going between two nests, and in that case he seemed to choose the new mate and new territory , neglecting his original nest….and as is often the case, that nest has failed. That female gave up. Not many females can pull this off alone.

We are starting to see a lot of failed nests too….many of them failing for unknown reasons. Some have not laid eggs, and are just housekeepers. Some have laid eggs but something happened to the eggs along the way. Some appear to be incubating too long without a hatch. (infertile or damaged eggs) Some have been displaced by humans removing their nests and they have struggled to find a new place to rebuild. I am spending a lot of time trying to read bands to document the movements of some of these birds when possible. I read the band on a female at a new nest, and later that day was able to read a band on a male not too far away. When I looked the band numbers up I discovered that was a mother and son! Most of our birds are unbanded now, but when there is a band to read, I work hard at reading it and some bands are harder to read than others. Woof.