Tag: Mark-8

The Bennets and Perfects arrived even earlier than the previous year. Big Mama arrived  March 18, Big Daddy two days later, they were mating by March 21.

On March 26, far from the first time this season, Big Mama rocketed into the air to repulse an intruder. They became entangled and dropped into the water still intertwined. The intruder flew practically at the moment of the splash.

Big Mama floated beneath her nest, head up and wings outstretched, surely no more than two or three minutes. It felt an hour watching. She struggled and failed to pull herself out of the water twice, every feather drenched, even her head, she’d clearly completely submerged. She lifted free on her third try and reached her nest. She had a brightly bleeding gash down her breast.

She healed within a month to no apparent ill effect, wasn’t so fierce and stopped rocketing off her nest.

Measured birds  per square foot, St. George Island might have been the Osprey Capital of the World.

The Perfects and Bennets further than ever ahead of schedule, arrived the first week of March. Fishing was stupendous. I watched Mr. B deliver a fish in each foot mid-March, then later, the male on the North-North Nest did the same.

Fish, tall pines, the increasingly  dilapidated remnants of man-made platforms, these drew the the fledge classes of ’20 and ’21, successful years for the “Chesapeake” imprint.

The day Big Mama got slashed, Mark-8 made his dramatic arrival, streaking out of the water bushes at the shore and smashing an intruder off Nest 1.

At the eruption next door, Mrs. Bennet split and didn’t return to her Nest 2 until the next day. And then refused to resume the mating regiment of the past three weeks with Mr. Bennet. But she relented the next day, March 28, the same day Ethel returned. And Mrs. B split again.

Previous Episode 2022-5:  Ethel Was Liberated

Upcoming Episode 2023-2: Ethel Remains Liberated

Ethel, in the nest, and Mark-8 perched above, don’t seem to be really into one another.

Osprey dung had become an obvious problem by 2022. It eats the paint off cars, porches, everything. A windshield count identified 60 nests on the island, add a conservative third again for nests invisible from the road and those invisible staring straight at them.

The Captain, again, proclaimed St. George Island the Osprey Capital of the World.

Even so, only two of the four nests out front creek fledged Ospreys that year. Ethel brooded a few days in April, abandoned that effort. In June, as eggs in Island Creek nests started hatching, Ethel and Mark-8 hunkered a second time for some serious incubation. Lasted a week. Ethel split when fish deliveries halted. She returned after geese spent a few hours stomping anything in the bottom of that nest to smithereens.

Mark-6 continued to slide sticks down triangular Marker 6 and visited Nests 1 and 2 when the males were absent. Twice, Mrs. B and Mark-6 breezily landed side by side on Nest 2, like they’d just flown in from grabbing a quick drink. Mark-6 loitered briefly, Mrs. B was friendly, he flew off.

Likely Ethel’s chasing Mark-6 off her nest was actually following him into the South Copse. Although I hadn’t realized, in 2022, Ethel had returned from wintering in Central America as a free agent.

On July 12, the same day, Mr. B gave Mrs. B a fish to welcome her return, Mark-8 gave a fish to Ethel. There was a full moon, daylight hours waning, fishing had picked up, for whatever it’s worth.

Mark 8 had begun eating his fish on a low pier very near Nest 1. Ethel’s best chance for a piece was to wait in the nest. Drop down to the pier, he flew with his fish. The gulls, his ever present sentinels, cleaned up the pier. Once, with Ethel watching and calling, Mark-8 left a chunk of fish on the pier. The gulls were on it before his talons left the planking.

Both remained committed to that nest. Up to this point they acted as allies battling any intruders eyeing Nest 1.

The Osprey population increased every year, real estate naturally grew scarcer, and this trend continued into 2023. That season will have barely begun when an intruder threw Big Mama off her nest, ripped her chest open, and left her floating in the creek.

Previous Episode: 2022-4:  Best to Lay by Early May

Upcoming Episode: 2023-1: Big Mama Attacked

Mr Bennet preferred the electric pole on the road to dine and to prepare a fish for nest delivery. He can see activity in Nests 1 and 2 from the pole, and probably action in nests across the creek to the south.

The Bennets controlled Nest 2; at least two loblollies in the middle of Parcel 157 Copse; all four man-made poles surrounding the oyster house; and the pilings on the lower side of the pier, among which Mrs. Bennet varied her dining spot of choice, perhaps influenced by altering configurations of vessels at the dock.

Upon George’s arrival, the Bennets made clear, their vast territory also extended across the entirety of the pier, including the toe at the bottom of the “L” where George was constructing his split-level nest.

The Bennet’s opposition did not approach the vigor of the Bigs, whose tenor reflected outrage of ancestral proportion against unpardonable nouveau. For all I know George’s installation at the end of the pier amounted to Osprey voodoo. Watermen avoided it.

Most likely George’s effrontery, squeezing between established territories, shoved property rights straight up those males’ beaks. Even Mr. Perfect, whose boundary lines were not impacted, joined the attacks.

Mrs. B and Big Mama stuck tight on their nests but rocketed into the air if Martha flew overhead, which usually Martha did not. At the first sign of aggression, Martha split, flew across the creek. When the locals came at George she’d absent herself, quick to leave the Purple Martin hotel to any invader.

Martha liked George to deliver her fish to pilings across the creek. And mating worked better on the pilings than George’s hot-mess nests of ’22. Martha did hang in the neighborhood, perched around the expanding split-level. But the only risk I ever saw her take was getting caught investigating other nests. It seemed as if Martha coveted a nest and when the owners were absent she’d investigate their nests. This would be before egg laying time.

But George did not abandon his split-level. Certainly not after holding his claim against the elder males. When matters calmed, Martha stood on the Purple Martin hotel, walked among George’s circular collection on the pier, and particularly liked perching on crossbars between a few pilings around the pier’s foot.

Neither George or Martha ventured farther up the pier than the foot. They’d additionally been granted five loblollies in my side yard, which, as the Osprey flies, does not invade airspace above the leg of the pier, straight off the toe to the trees. Even so, Mrs. B never dined again on the oyster house pier. It was touch and go whether she’d stick with her nest. Then whether she would return.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Previous Episode: 2022.2 Building Code Spat
Upcoming Episode: 2022.4. Best to Lay by Early May