Tag: Island Creek Ospreys

  • 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?

  • 2024-3: A Nest Too Far

    2024-3: A Nest Too Far

    George guarding his new nest, officially named Nest 3 this year of new nomenclature.

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

    In March, a fifth nest platform was installed between the pier and the Bigs, an attempt to lure George and Martha off the pier entirely. Overall, the neighborhood opposed the gesture. Vehemently. The Bigs ripped that nest apart.

    I accept responsibility for a poor design, and Martha’s eggs likely rolled off as the apocalypse raged. Once Martha’s eggs were gone, the Bigs calmed down quite a bit, but never stopped harassing the new neighbors.

    George kept delivering fish to Martha and they maintained possession of the disintegrated Nest 3, the Purple Martin hotel, their treasured crossbar at the end of the pier where George’s lower level had once rested, and five pine trees in the side yard. One of the five had succumbed to the pine borer and would be removed along with others before the Ospreys returned the next year.

    Martha hung with George until migrating the end of August, a few weeks before him. She will not return the next spring.

    Big Mama and Big Daddy will not return either. They divorced the end of 2024. Their two chicks disappeared overnight, likely early June 20, the morning an intruder knocked Big Mama off her nest. She took chase into the South Copse, returned 90 minutes later at a good clip, lifted her talons and shoved Big Daddy off their nest. Not much later she shoved him off again.

    The Bigs’ two chicks were going on 2 weeks old when they disappeared.

    There followed some make-up mating, fish deliveries, shortening days, and time for a second clutch passed. Big Daddy left the end of July. Big Mama went the distance. She rested and dined on the North Copse trees traditionally deeded to Nest 4. She migrated the middle of September. I’ve not seen either of them since.

    Previous episode: 2024-2: Good for the Gander

    Next episode: 2024-4:  Weather Suspected

  • 2024-2:  Good for the Gander

    2024-2:  Good for the Gander

    Ethel, on Nest 2, calls out her greetings to the New Female on Nest 1. Mr. Bennet stands behind Ethel.

    After Mark-8 threw her off Nest 1, Ethel settled into Nest 2 and Mr. Bennet brought her fish. Then Mark-8 brought a new female to Nest 1. Ethel freaked out. She flew between Nest 2 and Marker 8 over and over and over. Mr. B finally calmed her with more fish.

    The new female settled into Nest 1. Ethel laid an egg in Nest 2. Mark-8 dive bombed Ethel as she incubated. Henceforth, New Female followed every time Ethel left Nest 2; followed her out, followed her back. A few times New Female dive bombed Ethel on Nest 2, as Mark-8 had done.

    Mr. Bennet and Ethel failed to form a commitment.

    Mr. B split a day or two before Mother’s Day when Ethel left Nest 2 long enough for two Canada geese to stomp flat anything inside before going on their way. Ethel split the next day. Thus began something akin to the musical chairs game.

    Mr. B returned a few days later to a whirl of popularity, including food begging from Mark-8’s New Female.

    Mark-8 “mantling” his food to protect it from theft. Probably New Female on the pier with him. The female on Nest 1 is unknown, she could even be Natasha, she has a dark bib and face. But she’s not Ethel who is screaming at them from Nest 2, shown in photo above.

    Ethel reappeared, shooed New Female and Yet Another female off Nest 2. She and Mr. B tried again to commit. Mr. B tried again to dump her. But Ethel never severed ties with a male who had once delivered fish.

    And Ethel had laid an egg in Nest 2, which has appeared to Osprey observers to impart a sense of proprietorship. Mr. B appeared to accept Ethel’s presence in his nest as legitimate, though he no longer treated her as a mate, he also didn’t try to push her off.

    I named Mark-8’s new mate, a bit awkward, like your friend’s ex-husband’s new wife. They’d laid no eggs but they lasted the season. Plus, I wanted to try out my new nomenclature. I named her NF1 for New Female, Nest 1.

    In weird 2024, it had seemed the right time to funnel into an Excel doc my variously detailed (and not) observations regarding the 10 Ospreys I’d named. As I’ve done regarding everything for my entire life, the notes were jotted on paper scraps, my phone, in  blah-blah-blah yuk on the laptop, even in quasi organized logs in random and unorganized notebooks.

    Previous Episode: 2024-1: A Population Blip
    Next Episode: 2024.3:  A Nest Too Far

  • 2024-1:  A Population Blip

    2024-1:  A Population Blip

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

    Note: Pine borer beetles are always with us, arborists explain, but healthy trees fight them off. Trees stressed by drought, salt water intrusion, or soil compaction will lose.

    By 2024, the pine borers on St. George Island had been at it a quarter century, quietly thinning the copses one or two spindly loblollies at a time, such as in the foreground above. Gaps had started to show among the pines on the lower side of the island. Among the trees shone towering skeletons of trunks and branches stripped of bark and bleached white as bone. Turned out the beetles had been thinning the copses to death.

    Something else. In 2024, the Osprey population of St. George Island probably wasn’t the largest ever for probably the first time since the outlawing of DDT in 1972. For one, Mrs. Bennet didn’t return. Neither did Mr. Perfect. Which, in retrospect, might explain why the earliest early birds didn’t arrive early: Mrs. Perfect on March 12 and Mr. Bennet not until April 7.

    Ethel arrived the day after Mrs. Perfect and immediately began soliciting for a new mate, which she got. He delivered sticks and fish to the nest until Mark-8 showed up a couple weeks later and threw him off.

    Ethel returns to Nest 1 after Mark-8 arrived and chased off the male who made the nest’s  foundation of sticks seen here.

    Ethel had watched from Nest 2, not yet occupied, and returned promptly to Nest 1 once Mark-8 banished her suitor. Then Ethel and Mark-8 had an interlude. He sky-danced above her. They mated. He delivered lots of fish, which Ethel carried to Nest 2 to dine upon. Mark-8 brought sticks to Nest 1. They even got broody, hunkering down as if incubating. Until Mr. Bennet returned on April 7.

    Ethel stayed on Nest 1, called for fish as usual, until the sun went down. Unusual was that Mark-8 also remained all day on Nest 1, watching Mr. B instead of fishing.

    By the end of his arrival day, Mr. Bennet had brought numerous fresh sticks to Nest 2 and eaten three fish on his traditional Dining Pole, nothing like the hovering Dock Pole, but still an unobstructed view of Nests 1 and 2 as he dined.

    Mark-8 fished the next morning and ate his entire fish on the small pier by Nest 1 as Ethel called. Once Mark-8 had swallowed the fishtail, Ethel jumped to Nest 2.

    She hopped from one nest to the other all day, begging from the nest of whichever male was in the neighborhood with a fish. She once allowed Mr. B to mate, which did not produce a fish. She  was uncooperative at his second attempt.

    She headed home to Nest 1 in the afternoon and Mark-8 kicked her out, by which I mean, lifted his talons in the air and shoved them against her back and sent her overboard.

    Previous Episode 2023.3:  Mrs. Bennet Guts It Out

    Next Episode  2024-2: Good for the Gander