Island Creek Ospreys

Tag: Ethel

  • 2026-06: And That’s a Wrap

    2026-06: And That’s a Wrap

    A Great Blue Heron usurps Island Creek Osprey Nest 4, wrapping up the Osprey season for 2026.

    An Eagle landed on the Perfects’ nest last week, Sept. 17, something of an annual announcement that the Osprey of lower Island Creek have left on their southern migration.

    Junior had not. He perched on a piling across the creek from that nest and erratically cried complaints at the invasion of the Ospreys’ arch enemy. But no other Ospreys joined the complaint, suggesting the few remaining Ospreys circling the upper creek are visitors, heading south as well, looking for a bite to eat.

    LB, Junior’s dad, hadn’t been seen for a week prior to the Eagle’s visit. He’d put migration training into overdrive the week before that and stopped Labor Day weekend bringing fish to the nest for Junior.

    LB had already, patiently, used the floating bait  to demonstrate to Junior how to fish and catch meals for himself. Junior usually looked the opposite direction, kept keening for delivery. Over Labor Day weekend, LB retrieved only an occasional bait fish, but ate it all himself, abandoned the habit of delivering his second retrieval to Junior.  Even so, Junior never dove for a bait fish.

    There had been more fresh fish deliveries by then. The supplemental bait fish sharply fallen from mid-summer when LB would accept up to a dozen bait fish a day to feed himself and Junior.

    By August, LB was supplementing the bait fish with a few, small, live fish. Lily also brought a couple fish to Junior. A few times, in the scarce weeks of July, Lily would take a bait fish for herself, but she never delivered a bait fish to Junior, only fresh.

    A few days of watching his dad retrieve–or not–the bait fish floating by and no bait fish reaching him, Junior stopped visiting his natal nest. LB visited the neighborhood off and on into the second week of September, and most likely Junior got live fish from LB elsewhere. But by mid-September, Junior appeared to be on his own.

    Junior eating fish in the North Copse. He is likely the only Osprey fledge to make it off St. George Island for the 2026 migration to Central America.

    He stayed nearby, in the loblollies of the North Copse his parents had claimed as Nest 4 territory. He occasionally brought a live fish to eat there. But he wasn’t a regular visitor by the time the Eagle appeared.

    A lone Osprey call still carries across the creek in early morning, but probably not Junior’s. When a Blue Heron perches and preens undisturbed upon an Osprey’s nest, most likely that Osprey is out of town. That happened this week on Junior’s natal nest.

    With Junior gone, it’s a wrap on Island Creek Ospreys 2026.

    This is what I’ve learned, what I know now: Tossing bait fish isn’t going to cut it, for oh so many reasons. Not the least is how little reason there is to imprint an Osprey with a homing instinct for the Chesapeake Bay. The bay can no longer support an Osprey breeding season.

    Here’s Timothy B. Wheeler of The Chesapeake Bay Journal, with a sobering report on  Osprey Nesting Woes in the Chesapeake Bay, published here by Maryland Matters.

    Read it and weep.

    Previous Episode 2026-5 Losing Big Sis, Gaining the Sky

     

  • 2026-05: Losing Big Sis; Gaining the Sky

    2026-05: Losing Big Sis; Gaining the Sky

    Junior perched above the remains of Big Sis.

    Note: There are cautions on nest cam sites warning of potential violence on bird nests and the emotional toll. By “emotional toll” I mean “sadness.” Life frequently ends unpleasantly on nests.

    The night following Lily’s grab of a lobbed Alewife, a violent storm left only her youngest chick, Junior, alive. He’d nearly reached his elder sibling’s size with three days of bait-fish supplements. Big Sis had grown so substantial her feathers mounded above the lip for a week before assimilating into the nest.

    LB lands with a fish, Junior goes straight for it. Feathers in the foreground belong to Big Sis.

    LB delivered a frozen Alewife to Junior, the first fish he’d ever faced opening for himself.He’d likely survived on pieces Big Sis dropped while learning to feed herself. It can take an Osprey longer to get the hang of self feeding than of flying. Their beaks grip and tear, they don’t saw or slash. And fish skin is tough.

    The trick to opening a fish, it appears from cams and telescope, is to eat the head first. Dead or alive, fresh or frozen, doesn’t appear to matter. The head is the quickest way in, provides the biggest nutritional hit, and eases the subsequent unzipping of the scales to access the rest of the meat.

    Lily returned to Nest 4 the morning after the storm. Lying next to the pile of feathers she fed pieces of the Alewife to Junior, lying on her other side. Later LB delivered another fish to Junior, which Lily also took, feeding fewer bites to Junior this time.

    The next day, July 23, LB flew his fresh, decent-sized fish over the nest where Lily stood and Junior Fish Called. LB took the fish into North Copse, and on a branch above the nest ate the entire fish.

    Lily hangs around the North Copse, but not Nest 4. She grabs a bait-fish every other day or so. She only shares her fresh catches with Junior, dropping them so quickly I only identify her by knowing that’ not LB’s behavior.

    If LB sees a bait fish tossed into the creek, if he is not already occupied with another fish in his talons, he’ll go for that Alewife. He’ll share what he gets almost 50/50 with Junior. The technique sent Junior flying on July 28, 2026.

    Junior’s first flight was to the dead loblolly in the side yard, then a hop to the live one once I’d spotted him. He headed back to his nest, overshot it for a spot-on landing on Nest 5. No one home at Nest 5. Good thing. A few days later, Mr. Perfect chased Junior who had merely taken a shortcut across air belonging to Nest 5.

    But no trouble om his first flight. Junior flew from Nest 5 to Nest 4 just as soon as LB landed there with a fish. Another quite good landing.

    Junior accomplishes flying and landing July 28, 2026.
  • 2026-4: Fish Disappeared; Ospreys Starving

    2026-4: Fish Disappeared; Ospreys Starving

    2026-4 – What I Know Now – July

    Note: There are cautions on nest cam sites warning of potential violence on bird nests and the emotional toll. Let me be clearer, by “emotional toll” I mean “sadness.”  Life frequently ends unpleasantly on nests.

    July closed with only one Island Creek Osplet alive. He is alive because his dad, LB, will retrieve Alewives peeled from a flash-frozen cube of bait-fish and lobbed into the creek. LB shares his retrievals roughly 50/50 with Junior, the first Island Creek chick since 2022 to live long enough to fly.

    Junior in front and Big Sis behind on July 21, 2026.

    LB has been far and away the best fisher of Island Creek. Unaided, he fed himself and Lily through spring, added chicks in June and kept two alive for 7 weeks, up to the brink of flying. Five other nests in Island Creek hatched chicks and only two chicks, both in Nest 5, ever reached the lip of their nest, where that final survivor perished, emaciated, mid-July.

    LB had looked haggard by then, he was dragging, making fewer and fewer deliveries of smaller and smaller fish. Junior was becoming gaunt, bullied by Big Sis, the larger chick, already actively wingercizing–building muscles to fly.

    LB retrieves an Alewife

    But by July 18, the extended lack of fish had even slowed Big Sis’s hopping and flapping. In late afternoon, Lily left. She did not return that night to the branch overlooking her nest. She was not around the next morning.

    This is what I know now: It is time to ditch anthropomorphism. Nests significantly differ from nurseries. Ospreys perform an egg-to-fledge drama every year and their species survival is not dependent on that nest. Their survival is dependent upon returning next year.

    This is what I know now: Starvation stops the show, no matter if it’s Act One or Three. The survival message is: You cannot fall short of your body’s needs for a successful migration.

    This is what I know now: Fish are jumping in Island Creek from March through May. Males verily crow, circling the lower Potomac with long, fat, tail-waving fish in their talons. Chicks hatch late May through early June. coinciding with an abrupt, devastating reduction of fish.

    LB with Alewife in talons

    The morning after Lily left, LB perched on a loblolly above my porch, looking into his nest with a small fish in his talons. His two squeeing, starving chicks hit a frenzied pitch each time he touched down in the nest. Twice he lurched back out as Big Sis chick went for the fish but the third time she grabbed it and LB released it. Big Sis adapted immediately to self-feeding.

    Junior, by now automatically submissive to Big Sis, didn’t fight for the fish. But he’d kept growing as he reached 7 weeks, so he’d figured out some way to get fed something. All that day and the next day he stood sturdily beside his sister squeeing for more fish. By evening of the second day of squeeing, LB retrieved a frozen Alewife bobbing beneath his nest.

    By the next evening, July 21, LB had bulked-up and so had the kids. Lily, absent for three days, swooped beneath LB as he launched off his North Copse branch to snatch another bobbing Alewife, which she grabbed for herself. She looked awful. She was starving.

    Previous Episode: 2026-3: Island Creek, Hot and Dry

    Next Episode: 2026-5: Losing Big Sis, Gaining the Sky

  • 2026-03: Island Creek: Hot and Quiet

    2026-03: Island Creek: Hot and Quiet

    Ethel, above on Nest 2, out waited the Canada Goose who’d usurped Nest 1, returning after the usurper split and a young, male Osprey began checking it out.

    2026 – What I’m Learning Now – Summer

    Note: There are cautions on nest cam sites warning of potential violence on bird nests and the emotional toll. Life frequently ends unpleasantly on nests.

    The Canada Geese that seized Nest 1 on March 27, didn’t give it up until the first week in May. Ethel dove at the two Geese when they began squatting in her nest, which she’d been tidying a very little bit since arriving March 8. A male Osprey — probably LB, the youngster who ultimately pulls himself together into a successful first-time dad on Nest 4 — offered a few insufficient swoops of assistance, but split after that.

    Ethel brooked no further opposition, took to Nest 2 and behaved as though the Geese did not exist. No stronger ally arrived. Neither Mark-8 nor Mr. Bennet returned. She attracted a male Osprey to Nest 2, but his appearance launched LB across the creek to knock him off Ethel’s nest.

    Ethel, 8 or 9 years old, now possesses both the nests that caused such a ruckus in 2020. Among my named 10, she alone returned this year to this Island Creek address. And the week after the Geese left, she returned to Nest 1 to join up with a male Osprey.

    He looks younger than Ethel and spends a lot of energy revamping the place. Nest 1 now has such a substantial weaving of twigs and sticks that from a distance it can appear level.

    I’ve only caught peripheral suggestions of mating, although with Ethel that should minimally be modified to bonding. Meeting up the last half of May really is too late for eggs. Anthropomorphism suggests Ethel might be explaining this, and other matters, to a youngster so far more into nestorations than fishing.

    LB hasn’t reengaged with Ethel since her new beau arrived.

    Indeed, LB is very busy. He provides fish after fish after fish for the kids. He sometimes hangs out to watch Lily feed them, but doesn’t attempt to feed them himself. He never brooded after they busted their shells.

    Previous Episode 2026-2: Definitely Summer

    Next Episode 2026-4: Fish Disappeared; Ospreys Starving

     

  • 2026-02: Definitely Summer

    2026-02: Definitely Summer

    Mrs. Perfect works on the walls to Nest 5 as her surviving nestling becomes more adventurous. July 5, 2026 photo by author with iPhone clamped to middling telescope.

    2026 – What I’m Learning Now

    Note: There are cautions on nest cam sites warning of potential violence on bird nests and the emotional toll. Life frequently ends unpleasantly on nests.

    The day this is being written, July 5, 2026, at 12:10 EDT, Ospreys in Nest 4  and Nest 5 are busy feeding chicks. In Nest 5 (photo at top) one chick remains, down from at least two hatchlings.

    Lily feeding three chicks on Nest 4, June 23, 2026

    Two chicks remain in Nest 4, although three hatchlings had grown tall enough to be seen above the rim of the nest. But the third  remained small — the tiny white head, to the right of the older siblings.  Chick #3 was last seen June 23. The remaining two had an immediate growth spurt.

    June 26, 2026: A big growth spurt for Chick #1 (center, with a full crop) and also for submissive Chick #2 who will not approach Lily for a bite of food until #1 is done. Chick #3 was last seen three days prior.

    An Osprey nest about a mile up the road and tracked among the 20 nests in the Excel cache, also has two active adult Ospreys that appear to be feeding young.

    Except for a foliage-camouflaged box still holding my unreasonable hopes, that’s the 2026 Osplet count on these 20 nests.

    The pleasure in the proximity of three chicks distracts me from considering those overall numbers. Distractedly thinking about the Captain’s 2022 calculations, there are at least 40 more nests on the island. As I distractedly think, a solitary Red-winged Blackbird visits the birdbath. It has been very hot recently, around the Chesapeake.

    On June 23, Lily twice carried soft material into Next 4 and placed it into the floor, presumably covering Chick #3’s body. That same week, in Nest 5 — more difficult to see into than Nest 4 — was down to one chick.

    Mrs. Perfect’s remaining chick didn’t fit my expectation. I expected a big, bully, which I’d seen ignoring food offered by Mrs. Perfect to continue pecking at the head, back, and wings of an already subdued, if not injured, sibling. The Nest 5 guys were older than Nest 4 chicks, Nest 5 possibly hatched eggs as many as five days before Nest 4, during the last days of May. But the surviving Nest 5 chick was smaller and weaker than than even the bullied Nest 4 chick.

     

    By June 26, only one chick remained on Nest 5, between 3 and 4 weeks old and just big enough to poke a head above the twigs hiding the west side of the nest.
    By July 2, the Nest 5 chick (silhouette here) is starting to navigate the nest

     

    Previous Episode 2026-01: Almost Summer

    Next Episode 2026-03: Island Creek: Hot and Dry

     

     

  • 2026-01: Almost Summer

    2026-01: Almost Summer

    The tiny head of a hatchling is barely visible north east of the pine cone in the photo above. Lily has been feeding the hatchling and LB has been watching. LB pushed and shoved and nipped at Lily’s feathers to get a chance to incubate the eggs. But I never saw him one time incubate a chick.

    2026 – What I’m Learning Now

    Note: There are cautions on nest cam sites warning of potential violence on bird nests and the emotional toll. Life frequently ends unpleasantly on nests.

    The day this is being written, June 4, 2026, Ospreys in Nest 4 and Nest 5 are feeding hatchlings, right this very moment, at 12:55 EDT.

    Without the telescope I can see Lily plucking pieces from the fish LB delivered and placing them carefully into the nest cup, well beneath the lip. LB stands to the side and watches intently. He delivered a very small fish.

    It was 10 days later before the tip of the beak barely seen in the photo above appeared.

    The Perfects, with hatches I suspect a day or two ahead of Nest 4, may nevertheless be in a slightly more tenuous position. LB has been a more prolific provisioner than Mr. Perfect, increasingly important as chicks grow.

    Ethel began the season on Nest 2.

    To catch up: In addition to the five nests out front, at least 11 other nests among my Excel cache laid eggs this year and appeared to incubate them in a responsible manner. A nest farther up the creek,  out of my telescope’s reach but visible from the road, appeared to be feeding hatchlings in advance of Nests 4 and 5.

    Ethel laid no eggs this spring. Geese had overtaken Nest 1 by late March and she’d taken to Nest 2 as her primary residence. Mr. Bennet’s beehive of ’23 had weatherized down to little more coverage than 2021-22. It was still in better shape than Nest 1, which has a brace giving way.

    Lily and LB had had an exceptionally energetic mating season, arriving in the first part of March, laying at least three eggs by April 23, which in no way diminished LB’s libido. He began visiting Ethel after Lily quit hoisting herself up from her eggs to lift her tail for a chance of fertilizing another.

    LB had made a couple fish deliveries to Ethel and some tail swishing had gone on, but it stopped the first of May. Lily gave him a dressing down and, also, finally allowed him to incubate the eggs on his own.

    LB loved incubating eggs. It had taken him at least a week to give it a try, circling the nest bowl for days, peering inside as Lily took the fish he delivered to their Nest 3 veranda to dine. But once he tried it, he wanted to incubate all the time. For a while he’d push at Lily to get her to move off the eggs to let him take over.

    Pretty soon he was delivering fish after fish, settling in to incubate until Lily pushed him off. Then he’d go get another fish.

    Previous Episode: 2025-03: Ethel, Solo

    Next Episode: 2026-02: Definitely Summer

  • 2025-3: Ethel, Solo

    2025-3: Ethel, Solo

    Mark-8 was last sighted at Island Creek on June 2, 2025. This photo from April 2025 with focus sharpened by AI.
    Ethel on Nest 2.

    2025 – What I Knew Then, What I Know Now – 2026

    The loss of his and Ethel’s eggs proved the end of the line for Mark-8. He left within the first few days of June. Mr. Bennet had remained banished and neither male returned to Nest 1 or Nest 2.

    So, around the middle of June, Ethel invited Little Boy over for dinner, which he delivered. They did a bit of Nest 1/Nest 2 hopping, but Ethel preferred her meals delivered to Nest 2.

    LB also kept delivering fish to Lily on Nest 4 for a while, which she accepted, and then immediately threw him off the nest. When those deliveries tapered off, Lily became a self sufficient fisher. She dined on the top branch of the dead loblollies at the southern corner of North Copse, also part of her Nest 3/Nest 4 territory. She handily chased off Ethel, LB, and any other intruder on any piece of her territory.

    LB settled in with Ethel for the rest of the season and delivered fish. Ethel performed her unsynchronized swishing and at one point, after a mating visit with LB, shot out something that didn’t quite look like a regular PS—Poop Shoot, in the vernacular of online bird-cam chatterers.

    Note: Patricia Brennan, Associate Professor of Biological Science at Mount Holyoke, discovered, this century, that some birds have genitals. Previously, scientists believed a “kiss” of the multipurpose cloaca beneath each gender’s tail did the fertilization trick for all birds. The cloaca does it for Ospreys, giving the female significant control over the outcome.
    In response to my query about Ethel’s expulsion, Professor Brennan replied, “[F]emale cloacal control for sure! One of the consequences of most birds lacking a penis is that males really have to convince females to accept sperm and females really have to gape their cloaca. Otherwise they can eject it easily after mating as you have seen.”

    None of the Ospreys I watched acted like they planned to gear-up the reproductive equipment for a second try. They looked like hawks with the summer off. The 24/7 nest confinement had been lifted. They didn’t have to mate, feed chicks, or teach them to fly.

     

     

    At the end of 2025, two females held possession of two nests apiece on Island Creek.

     

    This made for the second year without a fledge class from Island Creek. In 2024, I had plenty of reasons explaining the loss of all the hatchlings. They’d been late hatches, unable to temperature regulate when parching weather hit, already diminishing fish supplies threatened dehydration. Lots of reasons.

    Not in 2025. What would inspire vast numbers of “Chesapeake” imprinted Ospreys, within the same fortnight, to abandoned their eggs?

    I also don’t know about Red-Winged Blackbirds, there were so many they’d cast a 10-acre shadow across the marsh as they readied themselves to feed. Now, a half-dozen are quick to the winter feeders on the back porch.

    Previous Episode 2025-02: Young Female Overturns Tradition
    Next Episode  2026-01: Almost Summer

  • 2025-2: Young Female Overturns Tradition

    2025-2: Young Female Overturns Tradition

    2025 – What I Knew Then, What I Know Now – 2026

    A bold female acquired the recently vacated Bigs’ Nest 4 upon her March arrival. She was young, with dark feathers about her face and a full bib, reminiscent of Natasha. She quickly showed her intent to extend Nest 4’s territory to include Nest 3.

    I called her Little Lady, sexist commentary on a female commanding a traditionally male venue, anticipating her somehow toppled. I amended to Lily once she’d succeeded. Otherwise she’d confusingly be both F3 and F4 on the Excel chart. She’d singularly laid claim to the oldest nest its first fully-vacant season. Then she used two males to double her holdings.

    George was so proud of his nest in 2024, but lost it in 2025.

    George, muddled without Martha, courted Lily, who perhaps allowed his misperception while she made inroads into lassoing Nest 3 into her Nest 4 territory. Then she lassoed LB to evict George, cinching her new territorial boundaries.

    I’d actually named this new male Little Boy. LB in the new nomenclature since in a reversal of Lily, he had no nest. Not after Ethel entered his realm.

    Yes, Ethel truly is always in the story.

    Lily and LB met in early April, and hit it off big time, many times. Many, many times. They were probably 2- or 3-years old, building their first nest—and it looked like a first nest—arguing which platform to use. Lily insisted on Nest 4, which is of course where it went. But they did not relinquish Nest 3, treating it as a veranda to the main nest.

    George only maintained possession of a particular loblolly across the road. Losing his rights to Nest 3 seemed to have included the crossbar at the end of the pier as well.

    He visited the loblollies in the side yard–out my pandemic office windows–that had provided perches for him and Martha. The five trees were down to three by 2025, the perches a great deal more exposed. He preferred the copse across the street, with a sight line to his former nest.

    And then, he just wasn’t around at all.

    The Osprey parents returned to their nests after the Gulls and Crows were sure to have scoured them. The pairs guarded their nests, tidied them, repaired and expanded them, and I saw a few lackadaisical attempts at mating. Probably only “bonding,” the catch-all verb for when males stand on females’ backs and do nothing but canvas the view or for the times mating fails to consummate.

    For a while, males kept up fish deliveries to females, tapering off on a timetable presumably established by each pair’s chemistry.

    Of course, that wasn’t how the year tapered out for Ethel.

    Previous episode  2025-01: Where Are the Gulls?

    Next episode  2025.3:  Ethel, Solo

  • 2025-01: Where Are the Gulls?

    2025-01: Where Are the Gulls?

    2025 – What I Knew Then, What I Know Now – 2026

    I didn’t think 2025 would arrive so quickly. I can delay its news with two romantic spring tales. For one, Mark-8 and Ethel met up at Nest 1. But this time when Ethel hopped back to Nest 2 and Mr. Bennet, Mark-8 persisted. Mark-8 won her back and banished Mr. B.

    Ethel retained possession of Nest 1 and Nest 2.

    At the top Ethel is with Mr. B on Nest 2, within the hour she hopped over to check on Nest 1, her distinctive topnotch shown here.

    For the other, a new, young couple, Lily and LB, took possession of the Bigs’ abandoned Nest 4 and also took Nest 3 from George.

    There’s a bit more to those tales, here and there, but most the rest is mere real estate tittle tattle. The only actual news boils down to this, the Ospreys on St. George Island abandoned their eggs the second half of May 2025.

    That ended the real estate shortage, the population crisis quenched. And the catastrophe stretched up the Potomac, only subsiding as the river approached Washington, DC, which reported a boom year for Osprey fledglings.

    But online nests in New Jersey and Australia also experienced unexpected abandonment of eggs  within a week or two of their hatching range. It felt like a DDT flashback.

    Note: Charter boat and conservation organizations have long blamed huge trawlers in the Atlantic for taking too many menhaden, the mainstay food of Ospreys and also Rockfish, a popular Chesapeake sport and commercial Bass. Current regulatory wrangling is following the historic tradition of wildlife preservation, indeed all conservation efforts, and many people are meeting about how too little, too late, if at all has been done.

    The enduring melodrama of Mark-8 and Ethel included a clutch of eggs in 2025. They’d both incubated, in their extraordinarily casual manners, which might never have produced a chick. Nevertheless, they’d laid them late and remained some days beyond the general abandonment. Then they also left. A Seagull got those eggs.

    In the absence of either Perfect parent, a big Gull swallowed an entire egg standing in the Perfects’ nest.

    What I wondered, in addition to the rest of such strangeness, was, Where were all the Gulls?

    For decades after my children were actual children, scores of marauding Gulls had stopped my breath, turned my blood cold, peppered summers with screams of “maw-maw-maw,” sounding for all the world like a child calling desperately for me.

    Then, I could not remember how long since that had happened. Years? Certainly. A decade? Probably. More? Likely. Because, really. where are all the Gulls?

     

    Previous Episode  2024-4:  Weather Suspected

    Next Episode 2025-2: Young Female Overturns Tradition

  • 2024-4:  Weather Suspected

    2024-4:  Weather Suspected

    Mrs Perfect on the Nest 5 perch, after losing her chicks.

    2024 – What I Knew Then, What I Know Now – 2026

    Mrs. Perfect auditioned intruders and accepted a second Mr. Perfect the end of March. He was pretty perfect about Osprey male performance on all counts I could see. Two chicks were bobbing above the nest lip by June 11 but didn’t survive past July 8, the date of the photo above.

    I don’t believe Mrs. Perfect returned after losing a clutch for the second year in a row. Now the new Mr. Perfect auditioned and fairly quickly had a new female for the nest. The names remained with the nest but are henceforth no longer accurately descriptive of the Osprey pair.

    Beyond the five nests in front of the island house, the telescope reached the lips of four others. Hatchling heads had bobbed in three. Then they did not. None had appeared in the fourth. Heat got tagged the culprit, abetting dehydration, a constant threat from the ever dwindling size of the also dwindling numbers of fish reaching the Ospreys’ nests.

    Ospreys who had remained paired through the back-to-back years of nest failures fiddled with their nests for another few weeks and then, again, migrated early.

    Although Ethel and Mr. Bennet had abandoned their egg in Nest 2, neither abandoned the nest.

    Ethel visits Nest 2 in early- and mid-June. Mr. Bennet tolerates her but is not receptive.

    Mr. Bennet took to constructing an increasingly inaccessible nest, difficult to land or perch upon. Nevertheless, Ethel treated Nest 2 as her property as well as Nest 1. She called for fish from Nest 2 and from Mark-8’s pier. This produced no immediate results.

    Mark-6 atop Marker 3, which holds a substantial number of sticks. Mark-8 in his Nest 1.

    I think she spent much of her time in the South Copse, a stand of tall pines the other side of the creek mouth that stretched to the river. I had suspected Mark-6 settled there after abandoning Marker 6 as a nesting platform as well as abandoning Marker 3, which has structural selling points but also a blinking light at its center, perhaps why numerous past attempts failed at producing an active nest.

    As the summer wore on, Mr. B began giving Ethel fish again.

    In 2022, Mr. B had fed Mrs. B, bite by bite, unhelpful and endearing. Mrs. B took each bite from him, turned and fed it to a hatchling, probably their bully. Watching had felt more intrusive than watching them mate.

    In 2024, a telescope wasn’t needed to follow Mr. B’s endearing and somewhat unhelpful building of a nest approximating the shape of a beehive. He sky-danced above it, spiraling and squeeing. But it didn’t matter. Any interested female would be chased off by Ethel.

    Mr. B defends his nest toward the end of June.
    July 21, perch still visible

    So Mr. Bennet remained my favorite, long-suffering on top of many merits. He added to his nest through early September when he migrated.

    His nest lasted the winter to greet him in the spring. And, of course, greet Ethel as well.

    Previous episode 2024-3:  A Nest Too Far

    Next Episode: 2025-1:  Where Are the Gulls?