The past week has been trying….we have found three chicks dead on the ground. The first two may have blown out in storms, and the most recent was reported to me by a person in the public who saw the chick fall out of the nest when an adult took off….perhaps accidentally knocking it out. I went to look for it and it even had some food in its crop. So terribly sad. It’s what I hate about this time of year….its when things can so easily go wrong. Chicks are too big to be sheltered under mom all the time and yet they cant fly yet. Tho fledging brings its own tragedies. I know it’s hard for people to face this aspect of osprey monitoring…it’s not all sweetness and rainbows. But we have to document these losses, by taking photos and trying to learn what has happened when we can.…watching how the adults respond to these losses. It takes a strong mind and a soft heart to balance our desire to document, learn, and to care about the chicks that have been lost. On the first two deaths, there were other chicks in the nest to care for, so for the adults, life goes on. On the tragedy that occurred yesterday, it was the only chick and the adults were nowhere to be found this morning. They probably have no idea what happened to their chick.
I appreciate the report from the person who witnessed the fall of the chick.
We are anxiously preparing for our first fledges…..the window is open for a few nests now. There is always a lot of breath holding and excitement. Our initial chick counts and current counts are holding steady at many nests, tho we have had some mortalities along the way.
So below are a few sad photos of 2 of the chicks that perished. And a big, crowded, happy family that is preparing for the first fledge!
And I want to extend a very deep, heartfelt thank you to the Raptor Resource Project for their generous donation to us. We could not keep up this level of monitoring without a lot of help and the financial support they have shown us over the years has made such a huge difference. It is hard to find the right words to appropriately express my gratitude. A MILLION thanks to John Howe and everyone at the RRP!
