First Fledge!

 Fledging season has officially begun! I found the first chick fledged from its nest on a cell tower. He was perched below the top of the tower, below the nest. But he also flew to the other side of the tower, so flight is good and landings were successful. His sibling remained in the nest with mom this morning. I watched for quite a while but on this stinking hot day, I knew I had more nests I had to check today, and he might sit there for a while! He kept looking up at the nest and thinking about how he would get there….gonna have to circle around a few times, but I had faith he could do it. I will recheck tomorrow if I can. This is the nest that I thought would be the first to fly, so this unlocked the fledging window for a bunch of other nests. I checked about three other nests and no one was flying…..few were even flapping ( one chick was). Maybe tomorrow. But this weather….oy vey. It’s miserable out there. I also found yet another new nest…..found one yesterday as well. Careful examination led me to believe that these last two nests are just being built this summer…..no whitewash which would indicate there had been chicks in these nests. I don’t know if they laid eggs or not. So we are up to 30 new nests this year. And those are just the nests I have discovered or been told about…..there may be more. I do not have enough hours in the day or volunteer monitors to follow all these nests. Now that it’s fledging time I have to get to all nests to confirm outcomes….and try to get the final chick counts. A nest is not successful until at least one chick is known to have fledged successfully. And this weather is making it very difficult. I hope the ospreys can handle it better than I can.