Single female…

 I went back to the nest with the single female today to see what was going on with that new male. I found the female and her two chicks just hanging out quietly…..I watched for about 45 minutes and during that time she occasionally started food begging and moved closer to her chicks. Finally the unbanded male arrived with a fish and she went over to him and took the fish from him….and he willingly let her have it. Then she turned and snapped at him! He just stood there so she lunged at him…SCRAM! Wow. This is so interesting….she didnt quite trust him, so she did move closer to her chicks in a protective posture. But he clearly was delivering a fish to her. And yet she didnt want him there. So she is not accepting him as a potential mate, but will take his fish. Hmmmmm. And because I am always so interested in behaviors, I now want to stay all day and see if she is leaving to get fish sometimes, or is she depending on him fully for food. This was the second fish delivery I have seen. Its fascinating! Will behaviors change over time? Will he get tired of providing for a family that is not his. Will she begin to accept him? I am still curious after 30 years of watching ospreys.

But jeeeez I have so many other nests to check, bands to try to read, and the fledging window has opened so we are watching for those first flights. AND I still have nests where chicks are so small, I dont have a full count of the chicks yet!

I was happy to see that MS at the Arb delivered breakfast right on schedule at 5:30 a.m. this morning! No slacking allowed buddy!

Interesting….

 Another challenging week in the osprey world here. We are discovering quite a few losses on the nests….three chick nests now have two, two chick nests now have one. The single Mom who was raising three chicks as of last sunday, now only has two. One was smaller than the other two, and now that wee one is gone. This morning I have been watching the Arb cam with growing concern. The male has always delivered a fish at about 5:30 a.m. and he has not been seen since about 6 p.m. last night. The female is clearly looking for him. Will she be smart enough to go get a fish? I have a knot in my stomach.

Another unusual observation at the nest with the single mom occurred yesterday. While her mate has been in rehab, another unbanded male has been seen often. She always reacted to him as an intruder, not allowing him to land on the nest, chirping at him. Yesterday she allowed him to land on the nest with a fish….she made no aggressive moves. He sat on the corner of the nest eating the head off the fish, and then she went over and grabbed the fish, and he let her! Then he flew off and she fed the remaining two chicks. It’s unusual in this circumstance for her to allow another male on the nest. In my 30 years of studying ospreys I have seen this happen once before. And it’s unusual for a male to deliver a fish to a nest where he knows he is not the father of those chicks. There is no biological incentive. But the one time I observed this, many years ago….that male would not feed the chicks or deliver fish to them….but was just delivering a fish to the female as part of a courtship behavior….and he cemented his spot on that nest for the following year. He rescued a damsel in distress to gain a territory.

Ahhh the male at the Arb did show up two hours later than usual with a fish, so all is well there!

Growing fast…

 I have been so pleased to watch the female at the Arb really doing better every day at developing her parenting skills. The little chick has been well fed and Mom has even figured out how to shade her little one. Whew. I am watching little Arb putting on weight each day, and these past few days I am noticing that the next big transition for the chick is beginning. I notice some little puffs of down on the nest as he/she approaches two weeks of age. This is when they begin to lose their light colored down and their heads and bodies turn a darker color. It’s kind of the ugly stage, when they look like a prehistoric creature. But when they are approaching three weeks of age, they start to get their head feathers and will begin to look like a real osprey! The feathers grow in from the top to the bottom….head feathers first and then what are called pin feathers start poking out on their back. The chicks grow SO fast….Alan Poole, one of the osprey experts says they grow to 70-80% of their adult size in the first 30 days!

Even now, every morning when I check in on them first thing in the morning 5:30 ish, I feel like he grew so much overnight! I also am usually catching a feeding at that time which is reassuring.

I am glad we finally are having some smooth sailing for this osprey family, after such a difficult start. We are gonna have a couple of stinking hot days before it cools a bit…so I hope they get thru this…with lots of fish and lots of shade from mom for Little Arb.

Happy…

 I suspect you all are ripe and ready for a happy post about ospreys! Well today, after I made sure the Arb chick was being fed, I headed back to the nest with the single Mom whose mate is at TRC. When I visited last week I saw two chicks, but a big poop squirt came from the opposite direction! I never saw a third chick tho. The volunteer monitor on that nest visited two days ago and only saw two chicks. I was concerned, but I do know it’s a tall task for a single osprey to feed three chicks on her own so I wondered if we might have lost one there. It would be understandable. When I arrived I saw no ospreys on the nest….my heart rate increased….now what? I parked and put my spotting scope up on the window….and immediately saw….THREE CHICKS! But they were home alone. One chick was noticably smaller than the other two. I checked the time…..I watched these three super sweet ospreys, the little guy flanked on each side by a bigger sibling. 15 minutes later Mom arrived with a fish and she started feeding the little guy first….the bigger chicks just waited. Then all three stood in a line, and mom fed them all fairly equally. It was mesmerizing. And some day they are gonna cart me away to the funny farm cause I find myself talking out loud to them. When I first saw the three chicks, I shouted outloud, “THREE!”

And as I watched the female feeding all these perfectly well behaved chicks, I kept saying “AWESOME! “ “You are a spectacular Mom!” Man I hope they all make it…..this is a difficult situation for a single female to be in….all alone with these chicks since they were newly hatched….and she has gotten thru one of the most dangerous phases, during the first two weeks or so, when the little guys cant thermoregulate. Leaving them unattended to get fish was risky, but necessary, and now they are all past that stage, and are beginning to lose their down and grow some feathers. There are still many hurdles and dangers ahead but….WOW! Super Mom! She definitely gets the mother of the year award!

Then I moved on to checking many other nests and saw a bunch of three chick broods. A few smaller families….a few that nested so late I still cant see the chicks to count them!

Tonight I get to have a glass of wine, not to dull the anxiety, but to celebrate this one heroic female osprey doing her very best in catastrophic circumstances. She doesnt know we are all pulling for her and her sweet family.

Another loss…

 More bad news….the biggest Arb chick seems to have died. I scrolled back thru the video and the chick was fed, VERY well at about 8 last night, and then it toddled back towards the middle of the nest and fell over and never was able to roll back over….it laid there all night, unbrooded and appears to be dead this morning. The middle chick is still OK and Mom brooded that one all night.

Its heartbreaking. Tragic.

We will see what they do with the body….and I hope they can manage to care for this remaining chick. Sigh.

Another loss?

 Sadly I have come to the conclusion that the littlest chick on the Arb nest perished yesterday, 6/24. He crawled off to the bottom right part of the nest and could barely be seen…and we have never seen him since. The camera is so oddly positioned and doesn t show the entire nest…..so we have to jump to some conclusions. We are only seeing two chicks being fed. At one point yesterday the female was looking into that corner and seemed to be pecking at something….I wonder if she was trying to see if the chick was alive. For some reason the other two chicks have migrated to that part of the nest and we just cant see much….and it’s worrisome that the chicks are hanging out so near the edges of the nest. Those of us who were watching this nest last year know that with no anchored sticks, basically no nest, the chicks have nothing to protect them or to hang on to in a storm and they can easily be blown off the nest. But they seem to have survived the heavy rains last night. The female continues to behave somewhat oddly….often flying off…and the male is there often and even broods the chicks sometimes. As long as the chicks are small enough to be brooded, protected by the parents, they will probably be fine…..the problems begin when they are too big to be sat on! My advice on how to prevent these problems was not heeded. We will worry until chicks fledge successfully.

Meanwhile I wanted to acknowledge the very real grief some of us feel over the loss of this chick. Tho his life was very short, he wiggled his way into our hearts. The grief comes from a very real sense of compassion for the struggles of all creatures on this earth. Survival is not always easy.

Celebrate!

 Even as my heart is breaking over what is happening on the Arb nest….littlest chick is fading, the nest material has blown away again, mom is not brooding or protecting them much…I stopped today at the nest where we have a single mom caring for her chicks while her mate is in rehab. A storm was coming thru so she has hunkered down on her brood…..when the wind died down and the rain stopped, she got up and flew off….gone ten minutes and came back with a fish! Two chicks immediately popped up, and then a big poop squirt came from the opposite direction! There must be THREE chicks there, tho I only saw two! She immediately fed those two and may have been feeding a smaller unseen chick. Wow! And she has survived a week of temps in the 90s with young chicks all surviving as well!!!! That aint easy! I sat there watching them thru my scope and uttering….“you are f—king awesome!” The chicks look to be a little past 2 weeks….heads dark, light baby down gone. I did not get to see their bodies. I am so happy about that situation….she is magnificent….an experienced female who stepped up and did what needed to be done. Remember she didnt feed the chicks at all the first 24 hours as she was just waiting for her mate to return…but then as she started to figure out what the situation was, she has proven herself to be a Super Osprey! As these chicks grow they will need more and more food so her job will only get harder in some ways, but they are more able to be alone for periods of time. So I celebrate her, as my heart breaks.