Island Creek Ospreys

Tag: Big Mama

  • 2022.2  Building Code Spat over Split-Level

    2022.2  Building Code Spat over Split-Level

    In 2022 the fledge classes of 2019 and 2020 roared into town, as obstreperous as ever the old Gang of Six. Youngsters canvased Island Creek through the summer, dipping into nests to attempt a claim, some ready to fight then and there.

    Mark 8 balancing and Ethel not cooperating.

    Mark-8 and Ethel remained adamant about their possession of Nest 1, although neither were into nestorations. They persevered as non-traditionalists. Mark 8 wasn’t into fish delivery. And Ethel wasn’t into mating.

    When Mark-8 zoomed in for a mating attempt—an approach favored by most lower-creek males—he’d have to walk Ethel’s shoulders down to force her tail up. If he succeeded with that, he’d have to walk his way back up to position his tail beneath hers. If all of this was accomplished, Ethel would swish her tail like she was all in, but whenever I caught a glimpse, she was all out of alignment.

    Note: Ornithologists say Osprey do not trade fish for copulation, not in a tit for tat kind of way. The male necessity is to override his own survival instinct and give his fish away. So, while the giving is a huge thing, possibly even tied to his perception of masculinity, the female needs to calculate, Is it enough? He must feed her, her chicks, and himself. A miscalculation could trap her into a lifetime of begging calls and drudgery.

    A new couple arrived in mid-April. I named them George and Martha for no reason at all. George began building a split-level atop a Purple Martin hotel rusted hollow. It was mounted at the toe of the L-shaped pier that separated the old Osprey nests from the new.

    While George’s efforts sometimes appeared within the realm of possibility, they also smacked of the style of Mark-6, who in 2022 continued sliding sticks down Marker 6. George incorporated the sticks that fell off the Purple Martin hotel into the circle of rope, fabric, and various detritus comprising the garden level of his castle sprawled across the pier.

    Just like that, the Bennets got another atypical neighbor flanking them on the north. None of the neighborhood took it well.

    Previous episode: 2022.1 Time Speeds Up

    Upcoming episode 2022.3 Territorial Negotiations

    Photos by author, taken with iPhone clamped to telescope. Versions in post were “sharpened” by Copilot AI.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • 2022-1: Time Speeds Up for Island Creek Osprey

    2022-1: Time Speeds Up for Island Creek Osprey

    2022 took off early and held a fast pace. Some of the named 10 showed up a month ahead of their previous year’s arrival. The Perfects dropped into place March 7, perched side by side as if a single, ceramic unit had been lowered onto the rim of their nest. They hatched four chicks in 2022 and subdivided their nest to jettison the younger two from the feeding schedule, as required.

    Mr. and Mrs. Bennet arrived the day after the Perfects, Mrs. B mid-morning and Mr. B careening up the creek early evening, landing gently on Mrs. B and mating. She greeted him head down, tail high, and their breeding season began.

     Note:  Ospreys don’t carry full-sized reproductive baggage year round. Initial mating efforts—the failures and successes—expand the gear to production size and drop it into place. Experienced couples can pack these preliminaries into seven to 10 days of concentrated and consummated mating to deliver a fertilized egg. Newer pairings take more time. Weeks. Longer. Maybe not until next season. Timing is the essence.
    Big Mama (L) and Big Daddy

    Big Mama arrived the same day as the Bennets. I didn’t clock Big Daddy’s arrival, but he was taking a turn incubating eggs by April 1, so he’d arrived close on Big Mama’s tail.

    Ethel and the two Marks arrived mid-March and resumed skirmishes between the two nests south of the dock; they flew tandem and even as a synchronized trio above the creek, they buzzed nests close enough to cause small fracases.

    Ethel and Mark-8 reclaimed Nest 1 and resumed squabbling with Nest 2 using the same old tricks: Mark 8 buzzed the Bennets as they began mating. Mr. B stole stick after stick from Mark-8’s nest.

    Mrs. B, a tenacious and relentless defender of Nest 2, could yet be surprised by Ethel quickly touching down on Nest 1 behind Mrs. Bennet’s back, only to spring over to her own nest as Mrs. B realizes. It drove Mrs. Bennet nuts.

    Mrs. B once rocketed off Nest 2, talons raised, hit Ethel square on the back, tumbling her overboard off Nest 1’s perch.

    The four of them looked more prankish than hazardous. This was their third year back. They worked together to drive off intruders, which I considered to be those I had not named, but their definitions were narrower.

    Matters still looked to be leveling out to a neighborly season. Mrs. B properly settled in and started laying eggs on March 25, still an early bird well ahead of the standard Chesapeake Osprey calendar. She had plenty of time if something should go awry. Good thing.

    Previous Episode: 2021.6  Mark-8, What Else?

    Upcoming Episode: 2022.2  Building Code Spat over Split-Level

    Photo by author, taken with iPhone clamped to telescope. Version at top was “sharpened” by Copilot AI.
  • 2021-4: Pride and Prejudice

    2021-4: Pride and Prejudice

    Mr. Bennet is landing on Nest 2, probably aiming for Mrs. Bennet’s back.

    The accommodating and unaccommodating Osprey pair of Nest 2 will be named Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, after their chicks hatch. The chicks will look like big, healthy girls when they fledge. But when Natasha dropped in, Mrs. Bennet hadn’t yet laid an egg, though she was ready. She stuck close to the nest except to dine at a nearby piling, within sight of the nest. She ignored the cuckoo egg.

    Not Mr. B. When he next delivered a fish to the nest, he brooded Natalie’s egg while Mrs. B dined on her piling.

    He carried on like this until Mrs. B began laying eggs a few days later, in the bowl she and Mr. B had carefully prepared, up and apart from the lip where Natasha had laid. Mr. Bennet’s attention transferred quickly to the eggs of the future Misses Bennet.

    Incubation can be pretty dull, viewed at the lip of the nest. The first surmise of a living hatch is an adult with food in its beak leaning into the nest bowl. Counting begins when heads start bobbing, which depending upon nest construction, takes at least a week.

    Big Mama and Big Daddy

    Only one head ever popped above the lip of the Bigs’ nest in 2021. Anyone’s guess the parentage. The Bigs had begun the season on bad terms, Big Daddy a month late, not showing until well into April while Big Mama had battled daily intruders.

    Mrs. Perfect

    Some assistance came the upstream neighbors, their nest also attracting intruders. These neighbor to the north were the exception to my 2021 naming. The Captain and I had years before named this pair the Perfects, practically the day they arrived. We named them after family, whose lawn we’d long commented upon.

    In 2021, the experienced Perfects, the novice Bennets, and a beleaguered Ethel fledged two chicks apiece from their considerably different nests.

    Image at top of post is taken from this photo by author via iPhone attached to a middling telescope. Copilot “sharpened”the image used at the top.

    Previous Episode: 2021.3: Birds Labor Too 

    Upcoming Episode:  2021.5  Mr. Bennet Was My Favorite

  • 2020-2: Rampaging Adolescent Ospreys

    2020-2: Rampaging Adolescent Ospreys

    The new Osprey nest platforms are down stream from the peeler crabs beneath the red roof.  The green Intracoastal Waterway Marker 3 at the edge of the small beach in the background denotes the mouth of Island Creek. The red, triangular markers heading upstream are 4, 6, and 8.

    St. George Island legend pegs St. Patrick’s as the day Ospreys return. In 2020 that coincided with the pandemic. My office moved to the second-story of the island house overlooking the coveted new platforms. Hard to miss the commotion. I dug out a middling pair of binoculars, climbed to the storage loft above the oyster house, and dragged a stool onto the landing. I went a second morning merely to prove to myself I could. I didn’t bother with the binoculars.

    The Gang of Six blew past that landing exactly like the rampaging, hormone fueled, adolescent hawks they were. Fast and huge. They turned sideways—in flight!—to accommodate the sloping barn roof. They cut corners so tightly the building might as well not have been there at all. I grasped the railing, off balanced. Their wings were huge! Huge! Feathers filled the view. An unbelievable number of feathers, layers and layers. Millions of feathers. The spread wings were four times my breadth. I heard, “whoosh” and felt a rush. It happened again, so fast, another chasing the first, Star Wars on the wing. “Whoosh.” And all those feathers.

    After that I balanced the Captain’s powerful oystering binoculars atop piles of boxes and thick books in my pandemic office and spent half an hour setting the focus on the new platforms.

    Map below so totally not to scale!

    An Osprey nest proved perfect for lazy birdwatching. Everything interesting that birds do, Ospreys do at their nests—courtship, nest building, mating, dining on live prey that is always fish, so not as gross as an eagle’s nest, eagles eat anything and the kids sleep beside the leftovers.

    Then Ospreys produce a 60-day family drama from feeding to fledging followed by prolonged survival training—flying and fishing—for their first migration. Nearly all of this, right there on the nest, binoculars in place and focused.