Thirtenth Morning
Weather - Cloudy, 79F, SSW winds 7mph, humidity 89% - Note: The conditions where I am do not line up with the official weather (obviously the weather station is not located here). The wind is always higher here.
Sunrise 5:51am
I actually slept till 6:00am yesterday, felt great. I also didn't have to drink my coffee out of a travel mug. This morning - back to the 4:00am alarm. It was harder getting up this morning after having the day off yesterday.
My walk to the nest box started quietly, then I hear the call of the eastern wood-pewee. As I start to walk through the pines I hear another call. It’s not coming from the lake, it’s coming from the pines to the right. I’m not sure what it is. I decide to take a moment to use the Merlin Bird ID app with its new sound ID. It tells me it’s a blue jay. I know it is not a blue jay, I try again. This time it tells me it’s a great horned owl. Now that makes sense, I’m thrilled. This is the food call from one of the juvenile great horned owls I monitored a couple of months ago. This is the first time I have heard it since it left its core territory. - Now that was worth getting up at 4:00am to hear.
This is the recording I took this morning. Note that it was very windy so I processed the recording through a noise reduction, I also removed some quiet time between the first and second call. The time between the third and forth call is actual time between calls.
I got to the nest box at 5:15, my regular time. I could hear the eastern kingbird family. At 5:34am she emerges from the nest box. Still fairly dark.
Now I get back to waiting, and waiting, and waiting. There seems to be a little drama going on between the kingbirds and the red-winged blackbirds. At one point a female red-wing went after the family, then a male red-wing went after the female red-wing. A moment later the male red-wing went after the kingbird family. Yup, a lot more pictures of the kingbirds. I might as well take pictures of them, I have nothing else to do while I wait (since I also have to keep an eye on the nest box).
I wait for the wood duck to return. I am distracted by the eastern kingbirds but I do not see her return.
So this is my thirteenth morning, 40+ hours and only 4 POSSIBLE viable eggs. Sadly this is my last morning. I will write a summery of this experience and post it.
I will try again next year. We do our last nest box check of this box on Saturday. If we find four hatched eggs I will have mixed emotions. I will be glad she did have a clutch after her commitment to the nest. I will also be a little sad that after all these hours, I gave up too soon. We’ll see.
She left the nest box at 5:34am. Did not see her return.
I stayed 3 hours.
I invite you to view the Summary, where I share my thoughts on this experience.
