The Saga of Fred and Ethel Part II 2023

The time has passed...almost two months, since my last post. The couple has been rather pornographic over the weeks and with each day the male had brought more and more sticks for their abode. It seemed to me they were not the original Fred and Ethel that I knew, and I admit I have not taken the time to see if they are banded. But they seemed both awkward and shy in their mating and nest building. The residential Canadian geese would swim by and call and cry a short distance from the nest as they swam by. The female Osprey ignored them as she stood in the nest or at the edge, knowing they were no danger to her safety.

Weeks went by and they would add a stick or two a day.  I was wondering if they would ever start their family.

Both Fred and Ethel are very patient.

Then one day there was some commotion on the river.  I have to admit that I missed it and hubby while gardening went down to see a Bald Eagle attacking the female osprey as she finally started to sit on the nest.  Remember the fight over toilet paper curing COVID?  This is something like that, only a fear of diminishing fish resources.

The female osprey survived but you can see she has damaged some feathers and is hunkered down over her precious egg(s).  It takes thirty to forty days for eggs to hatch and she has been sitting for close to 25 days.  During the mornings I see the male fly in to relieve her while she goes out hunting for breakfast.  She also does some lovely morning acrobatics to stretch and strengthen before her return to the nest.

Such restorative activities watching our prey birds.

Are You Listening?

"At the moment of giving birth, each reef sings its own lullaby to its young.   Each night, the reef sings into the sea, guiding its young back home."  

Spring reflection on the water.  The red circle is jellyfish as is the white blob.

This text above sounds like a poem.  It sounds like the lyrics to a song.  It is an actual fact from studying the bioacoustics of the Australian Great Barrier Reef.  Tim Gordon's Doctoral research using underwater speakers and collecting samples in both coral reef areas and open areas discovered that the tiny coral larvae after weeks afloat in the ocean are able to find their way back to their coral reef.

I am in the process of reading The Sounds of Life by Karen Bakker.  It is a book about the unsuspected depth and breadth of nature's sounds.  Thus far I have read about the whales in a study that has verified they carry information from many generations in their songs.  The Innuit knew this, but the white man didn't believe them until extensive studies on whale sounds verified it.  Whale sounds that cannot be heard by the human ear can travel across the ocean.

The book also describes studies done on freshwater turtles in the Amazon that prove they make sounds that cannot be heard by the human ear These sounds are made even before the hatching that helps siblings survive by making noises so that they all hatch close to each other.

Most of these studies were done by scientists with determination (many women of course) but also men who searched hard and long for funding and support.

I may continue to enlighten those of you who would not be interested in reading such a long book in future posts, perhaps.

Such information makes me realize the interconnectedness of this planet and sad that I will not be around to find out more about how we all came to be.  We are an amazing complicated biome that came from an explosion billions of years ago. 

Spring is Still a Tease

Spring has arrived in the Mid-Atlantic. All the news can talk about is our non-native cherry trees in full bloom and soon-to-be pink confetti all along the roadways and lawns. It does look like the osprey 'may' nest on the newly cleaned platform.  I would track my binoculars to the nest that has been built and used for a few years as it sits in a high tree across the water and I saw no activity. I kept my fingers crossed. On March 9, weeks before the osprey was due to arrive a lonely female mallard spent a day on the platform, perhaps waiting for her mate.

A week later, while walking down our road, I found she was part of the two mallards that swim in our slightly hidden vernal pond each spring and probably nest somewhere nearby. I hope it is a safer site than our daylilies. She nested deep in their leaves and a fox or raccoon came in during the night and ate her eggs a few years ago.  I am amazed that there are any mallards at all!

Then on St. Patrick's Day, exactly on time, the osprey arrived. Studies have shown that they travel 95-380 kilometers (59-236mi) per day, so when they arrive they are exhausted. I could not tell whether it was a male or female because the size was not large or small but seemed medium to me, but the females are supposed to be the ones that arrive early. She was just sitting and waiting, but not sitting on the platform all the time. Sometimes she was off fishing and others resting on a nearby tree branch. Then a few days later the male arrived bearing gifts. Sticks.

She did not seem too excited.

Later in the day, or perhaps it was the next day, I noticed another osprey sitting in a tree close to the platform. I am guessing it might be a juvenile from last year or a male looking for a mate. It caught a fish and had a nice meal while observing the river and the platform below.

When that osprey had finished eating it flew down to the nest platform but the female chased it away immediately. Now things seem back to normal although moving slowly. They have mated although he almost knocked her off the nest in the process! Birds are such clumsy lovers! The nest is growing ever so slowly, so I still am cautious. They are behind many other ospreys that have arrived. The sticks are a bit more than in the photo below, but still quite sparse.

Our deck sits high enough that we can look down on the platform instead of trying to look from below and that makes it much easier to see when they have eggs or little ones. They are amazing creatures. They mate for life, travel both down and back separately and yet still manage to meet within days after flying thousands of miles, have sex for a second or two, and then begin a hardworking summer of nest building, nest repair, and feeding and training the young.  You may remember that I call them Fred and Ethel.

Spring Has Arrived But Late Due to a Nasty Wind

These last few days were cold and very windy.  Everything that was not attached flew across the yard as it was chased or thrown by the howl of the wind.  The windy front behaved like an angry teenager that had been grounded for the week.  I have lots of small branches to start my fires and create coals to burn the large logs. I walk around and fill my arms.  I never have to search far for kindling in this urban woodland.  Spring is here, so our nighttime fires are becoming fewer and fewer, yet a broken heater motor made the use of fires our salvation last week.  The motor on the new HVAC system, which was less than a year old, was replaced without cost to us.

The same wind that pummeled our naked trees dropped so many feet of snow to the north of us, that I felt guilty feeling sad for having to stay inside in our milder winter weeks.

But today it left us and pushed the clouds north leaving behind our first sunny and almost warm day.  

I realized that 50 mile-per-hour winds would delay the flying of our osprey.  They are amazing and return within three days of St. Patrick's Day here in the USA.  Today is St. Patrick's Day.  Pinch me...I am married to an Irishman.  They should return any day now.  First the one and then the other.

Each morning and at lunch and in the evening, I pass the kitchen window and look out carefully across the river to see if they have arrived.  I see that their well-engineered nest which they built in the trees across the river a few years ago has survived the winds.  They could not move the geese off the platform we built.  

The osprey that built a nest on the utility pole at the art museum a few miles away has returned. I heard their call while weeding our children's garden there and my heart jumped a beat.  

Our osprey must be on its way.  I will have to wait and see if they put sticks on the platform or move back into that awkward collection of sticks in the trees.

It will all depend on how much they want to redecorate, I guess.

It Is not a Drum Circle

As many years as I have been on this blue jewel of a planet, each season fills me with increased awe.  After the quiet of winter, spring starts with its percussion section.

As I sip my coffee in the early morning, I can hear the sound of a deep African drum out in the woods.  At least its hollow and penetrating beating sounds like an African drum and carries far from the tree into my living room.  

The pileated woodpecker's territorial call is loud and hollow and sounds like a war drum somewhere in the jungles of Africa.  It is actually called "drumming" by ornithologists. The bird is native to North America and can weigh almost one pound on the large end of their size.  They chip out rather large rectangular holes in search of insects or colonies of ants.  The male's drumming is to declare territory and/or call to a mate.  Since it is now spring, I hear his drumming every morning.  It is a simple rhythm and is very short.

Their excavation can actually destroy a healthy branch of a healthy tree.  This is what is happening to a huge oak near my neighbor's house.

The healthy branch in the photo above will fall in the coming months or next year if we get a big storm.  One year I actually had a pileated come to my house and look into my patio door as the snow covered the patio.  I couldn't find any bugs to offer and I do not know how to speak pileated.  Some days I wish I was a witch.  I have searched for that photo but it is on some other stored drive.  I think I only have 10,000 photos of birds!  I do have them organized by season and type, but still, it is a challenge.

Nature Evolves and Man Interferes

Perhaps my regular readers know the saga of the Osprey on our river.  Nevertheless, here is a short review.  When we built this house over a decade ago, the Osprey in the area wanted to use the cabin roof of my husband's boat to build a nest.  They dropped sticks and algae and I removed sticks and algae.  Hubby was on travel.  I continued to do so, but they persisted.  Finally, we admitted that we needed to build them a platform and we did.  They nested there for years raising one or two baby osprey.

Then one year the Canadian geese established a spring nest there.  They arrive about two weeks earlier.  When the Osprey flew in, they tried, without success, to remove the sitting Canadian geese.  You can go to the link here for that event. 

This spring we hired a helper to clean off the platform which was six inches thick (after a decade or more) with fish skeletons, crab shells, mud, and grasses.  There was so much detritus that grasses bloomed up there each spring.

This is not a job for the faint of heart, as you can see.  This gentleman has experience working high electric lines, so is most capable at a job that requires height.  After a short while the platform was clean.

The geese reappeared the week before to survey their domain.  When they arrived again, two days later, they were loud in their protest to find their place had been "redecorated."  The female explored every corner.

We are now in a holding pattern wondering if they will try to re-nest.  That would be a lot of grasses and straw for them to bring in.  Thus far they show up each morning and stand looking out over the platform, but make no effort to nest.  We shall see....the plot thickens.  Osprey arrive around St. Patricks Day which is March 17.

Helping Take Flight

It was either Audubon or Cornell Feeder Watch that recently sent me an email survey asking what there is about bird watching that compels me to do it and to collect data for them. It was one of those surveys that end with a request for a donation, which means to me they don't really care what I think or what motivates their supporters.  They just need money, honey!

I imagine the survey data may be collected and then stored on a server somewhere, perhaps never to be reviewed or only pulled out when they feel the data is compelling enough that it should be shared.  Birds are easy to watch whether you are looking in your backyard, taking a walk in the park, or even walking along a shoreline.  They are the easy reward for us elders.  The only real gear is walking shoes, binoculars, and if needed, a notebook and a bird guide.

There are 56 datasets on birds that are of considerable importance and publically available. Go here: https://data.world/datasets/birds to spend a few hours falling down the white rabbit (bluebird) hole if you are addicted to birds and if you do not mind signing in to establish an account.   Or an even easier site to peruse is Cornell Lab of Ornithology with its global data.

Marvelous stuff! Thinking about this group I will mention that the largest bird is the ostrich and the smallest is the hummingbird. Birds can live from one to one hundred years. While they are becoming threatened there are still 10,000 species worldwide.  But 49% of bird species are in decline!  They are forced to live next to or in our artificial environments.

How can you save these descendants of the dinosaurs?  Use reusable containers and paper...not plastic.  Recycle instead of throwing stuff out.  Reduce the lighting around your home during migrating season.  Protect birds from hitting your windows by using decals or strips of foil on the glass to break the reflection of the sky.  Do not use pesticides in your yard.  If you are serious you can plant natives in your yard and provide water and safe places (no cats) for birds to rest during their migration or to nest during spring seasons.

Plant oak trees to increase the Lepidoptera population.  According to Doug Tallamey (a famous author that native gardeners love), the oak trees support 534 species of insects that will feed your birds in the spring.

AND try to reduce your use of fossil fuels for the long-term slowing of climate change that impacts bird (and other wild animals) habitats greatly.  And of course, you can donate to any of the numerous bird conservation societies or groups in your area.