The permanently returned Mrs. Bennet laid a clutch the third week of April. Three chicks hatched.
Ethel and Mark-8 reunited, incubated, fish deliveries stopped, Ethel split, just before the drenching rain that closed out April.
Relentless rain and relentless wind barreled from the northwest, Island Creek working like a wind tunnel. No one could fish. There was no lee. Undoubtedly eggs drowned. Females abandoned nests to feed themselves. Save themselves. Males did not return to their nests for days, not merely the duration of the storm but some not for many days after.
Of 13 nests in sight or within feasible conjecture, only two nests fledged chicks. Aunt Suzanne’s nest across the creek fledged two. That’s her at the top with her two chicks, a month or so old. The Bennets fledged one, a bully, who failed to return from her maiden fledge.
Big Mama bailed on her eggs May 2, still near-gale conditions, no sign of Big Daddy delivering fish since the storm began, April 29.
Mrs. Perfect finally left her eggs June 26. By then Mrs. Bennet’s first hatched chick, the bully, was going on three-weeks old. Mrs. B’s youngest hatch perished in a week, the second hatch gone in two weeks. I had noted, it was the first day I’d not seen Mr. B bring a fish home. Mrs. Bennet brought a fish into the nest late in the day to feed the sole survivor.
The Bennets’ bully fledged July 26 and did not return. Two days later an unidentified fledgling appeared. It hopped nest to nest, from Ethel to Martha to Mrs. B, needing a rest and begging a bite to eat. Mrs. B acquiesced. From August 2 to 18, she fished for this fledgling, flew with it, and got it on its way.
She had scolded Mr. B’s initial effort to push the orphan fledgling off the nest and he never again set a talon on that nest if the adopted fledgling was there.
And he no longer shared his fish with Mrs. Bennet. Instead, as he had done with Ethel, he perched on the Dock Pole looking straight into Nest 2 and ate his fish as Mrs. Bennet and the fledgling watched. And like with Ethel, Mr. Bennet did this repeatedly, fish after fish, day after day.
In the absence of the fledgling Mr. Bennet attended his nest with routine autumn nestorations. He left if the fledgling returned. Once the fledgling no longer appeared on Nest 2, toward the end of August, Mr. Bennet rejoined Mrs. Bennet in the nest at sunrise and sunset.
Without chicks, migration began sooner. Most of the named 10 left by the opening days of September. I heard George and saw Big Daddy on the 10th. That would have been the end of 2023, except on September 13, when a male I supposed was Mark-6 perched on Marker 6 for a while. Then a final visit by intruders taking a dinner break on the Bigs’ nest before moving on.
Previous Episode 2023-2: Ethel Remains Liberated
Upcoming Episode 2024-1: A Population Blip
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