Monday, July 25, 2016

Missing


We have lost a baby.
Sometime between Saturday, July 16 and Saturday, July 23, one of the osprey babies disappeared. We saw nothing, we heard nothing, we noticed nothing until the weekend.
For certain there are only two. We've had the binoculars trained on the nest for two days and know there is no longer three babies in the nest. In this photo taken this morning, the adult is on the left and the other two are her offspring. They are distinguished by their spotty back feathers and the brown on the back of their heads.
Dwayne took the four-wheeler for a drive this morning to see if he could find the "kill & pluck" site but he found nothing, and the deer (moose) flies prevented any on-foot investigation.
As the human neighbours, we've been so vigilant, from early morning until evening, about keeping an eye on this year's babies, and we've watched carefully enough to have been confident that there was always a parent on lookout, either in the nest or on the perch. Was that the whole point of the eagle's disruptive behaviour last Thursday? Had he snatched one of the babies? Did another eagle snatch a baby while we -- humans and ospreys -- were all off driving the eagle away? Did we fall for the lure? There is no way to know. There is no evidence to answer our question. We are left with two babies and the mystery of the lost sibling.


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