Editorial – I’m fascinated to learn,
from The
Des Moines Register via USA Today, that a
fellow named Bob Anderson, who put a bald eagle cam’ on the ’net back in 2008, was
responsible for starting the practice of putting nest cams on the Internet.
The eight years I’d been operating this cam’ (and some of you were watching it)
before 2008, somehow don’t count, either due to a startling ignorance and/or ego
on the part of Bob Anderson, or standard journalistic quality controls (roughly
none) at The Des Moines Register.
(How many times have you read an article in any newspaper or magazine on a subject
in which you are highly knowledgable and not found cringe-worthy mistakes,
omissions, etc.? That's what I mean by “standard journalistic quality controls.” That
being the case, it seems more likely that The Des Moines Register is to blame than
Mr. Anderson, but who knows?)
Seriously, this isn’t a tough issue to to sort out: just email the person,
V. Dziadosz, who created and has maintained the worldwide
list of nest cams since 1998, or lookup that site on the Internet Archive
(bearing in mind that
the
site was at a different location prior to 2012), and the absurd claim of hatching
the idea of nest cams in 2008 falls apart – and someone has some serious apologizing
to do.
May 6 – Owlet no. 5
left the nest successfully. (More complete update to come.)
May 4 – Owlet no. 5
stayed put. In as much as it is slightly more than three days younger than no. 4,
I think it made the right choice; let those wing feathers grow a bit more
before trying to take to the skies, even if it that only means jump-flapping
between tree branches.
Meanwhile, one person shared with me their letter to the author of
that
article about nest cams in The Des Moines Register, and the
author’s response. I found the response rude, and the rebuttal offered by the
author to be flatly contradicted by his own unambiguous statements in the article.
So, I find him impressive, but in all the wrong ways.
May 3 – Owlet no. 4
left the nest at 3:42 AM (on the same night owlet no. 3 left the nest, just on
a different side of midnight). Neither 3 nor 4 made the remarkable flights to
the hackberry trees at the back of my yard that nos. 1 and 2 did. Instead, they headed
off to the side, first into a crepe myrtle tree that abuts the nest box tree, and
from there through two of my neighbor's trees (in the latter of which they spent
the day to the consternation of many of the local songbirds). After sunset, their
dual food begging from that tree made their location clear.
Owlets 1 and 2 remain, presumably, in the hackberries and adjoining trees,
since those provide much better cover and far more scope for movement. (Also,
every year's owlets end-up in those hackberries, probably for the aforementioned
reasons.)
Owlet no. 4’s exit left no. 5 alone in the nest box. Rather than encouraging
no. 5 to leave the nestbox, Mme. Owl seems to have gone to extra lengths to look
after him/her in the nest, delivering a mouse that night, and visiting the nest
box on three occasions during the day. (Which is probably the reason that the
local songbirds were aware of the location of nos. 3 and 4; Mme. Owl was probably
roosting with them in between her visits to the nest box. If so, her mate would
have been roosting with nos. 1 and 2.)
Postcards: Thanks go out to Betsy, Nancy & Sandra, and KimMarie.
April 30 – The
first owlet left
the nest this evening at 8:37 PM CDT. After walking to the far end of the owlet
rail, it leapt a
short distance to a nearly vertical limb of the tree, climbed to its broken top,
where one of its parents watched from a small, remaining branch, then jump-flapped
its way across to a taller limb that leans into the back yard. The owlet climbed
to the broken top of that limb (even higher than the top of the first limb to which
it climbed),
and, with hardly a pause to consider the situation, leapt into the air, targeting
a short tree growing beneath one of the hackberries at the back of the yard. It
must have covered fifty feet in that flight, and it lost altitude the whole way
since its feathers aren’t yet sufficiently developed to let it generate net lift,
but the flight was a success. Both adults observed the whole thing from the
hackberry that overshadowed the little tree, but there was nothing they could, or
needed to, do to help. It just worked splendidly.
I’ve been wondering for years how the owlets cross the gap from the nest box
tree to the hackberries at the back of the yard, where they always end-up. I think
I have my answer. The only part I haven’t seen is the transfer from the small tree
to the hackberry, but that should be a simple matter of climbing and a bit of
jump-flapping; trivial compared to the feat it had already pulled-off.
Returning to yesterday’s
activities, I haven’t gone through all of the stills taken on the 29th in order to
find the best possible owlet group portrait, but I have looked at the movies I shot,
and links to them are included below. The portrait will look a lot like what you
see in the movies: two cooperative owlets, two lumplets, and one preoccupied with
hatching a plot for world domination. Every owl has its own personality, but I
was surprised that three of them were so consistently reserved, which hasn’t been
an issue in past years.
The first owlet movie from the 29th.
(MPEG-4, 1080p, 12:12, 198 MB)
The second owlet movie from the 29th.
(MPEG-4, 1080p, 12:28, 212 MB)
BTW, you can see me attacked by one of the adult owls in one of these movies.
That would be really interesting, if “visible,” in this case, meant more than a
blur passing through six frames (1/5th of a second). Anyway, as my increasingly
free-form hair style suggests, I was attacked a number of times during this process
(all strikes to the head; hence the hair issue). And, of course, I deserved the
attacks and all the pricks of owlet talons in my hands; it’s the price one pays
for interacting with this type of wildlife, and it’s a bargain as far as I’m
concerned.
One little event that fascinated me: After the owlets had been returned to the
nest, the sun had set, and I’d nearly finished cleaning-up after this process, one
of the adults chose to perch where the owlets had been photographed. It watched me
as I finished the cleanup without a trace of concern (or obvious interest),
something it could more readily have done from any of the surrounding trees. The
adults don’t normally perch so close to the ground (safety is up in the trees), so
I can’t help but wonder if it had a specific reason for wanting to be on that perch,
something like experiencing a childhood memory of sitting on that same perch for
the camera. Basic curiosity is a simpler explanation, but, for whatever reason,
that’s not how it struck me at the time.
Make of that what you will.
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