Rfalconcam Forum

"March 10 – The clutch is holding at five eggs. The interval between egg layings increases with each egg, so a sixth (if there’s to be one) may still be a day or two away. The last time I played landlord to a six egg clutch was in 1999, and every year I hope it’ll happen again. Nonetheless, a five egg clutch is unusual enough, so no hard feelings, Mme. Owl, if five’s the limit."

He's still working on the cams so there are only daily stills so far - live video to follow, I guess.

http://www.chrisowlcam.net/2014/ (http://www.chrisowlcam.net/2014/)

5 eggs!    :o    Fun times!

"March 13 – The morning’s post-sunrise hours included enough starling intrusions to put Mme. Owl into full defensive mode (see image). . . I think hopes for an oh-so-rare sixth egg should be abandoned. We haven’t been shortchanged, of course; five egg clutches are plenty rare enough. (It’s been fifteen years since my box had a clutch of more than four eggs, and I may be beating the odds, even so.)"

Oh boy, hope she keeps guard! Egg stealer!

If I'm not mistaken, the starlings are apartment hunting more than grocery shopping.

That's good!  I was thinking like Donna!

Sorry, not a duplex!

"March 14 – Strange Mme. Owl. From about 8:32 PM to midnight she brooded only four of the five eggs. It seems too obvious... to be a mistake, and reinforcing that view, she left the nest ...for eleven minutes and continued to exclude one egg upon her return...Sallie, the raptor rehabber, comments that 'maybe this is her first rodeo.' Quite possible. For myself, I’m thinking more: “You – in the box – come out with your talons where we can see them and explain yourself.” (If only wildlife biology was so simple.)"

I noticed this yesterday, scanning through the 3-14 dailies. Too early for her to sense that it is a dud, I think! Then I checked the 3-15 dailies and she took the egg back around 2:30 a.m. hm. Chris had a thought that maybe this was a first-laid egg and she was slowing it down. The heart is one of the first things to develop, so maybe she DOES sense too-little or too-advanced development.  Maybe she just hates sitting on 5 and that’s how the fate of a chick is decided. With peregrines, when the male (with his third-smaller bottom) incubates, we've often seen an egg escaping, but they fix it as soon as they notice. I like Sallie’s version too, though cluelessness seems unlikely (Mme. Owl rolls and arranges them as well as any other raptor-egg-sitter).

Go figure.

The 5th egg is again with the others, and this is about how it will probably be for the next, what, 10 days or so?

Hmm, very interesting! Just have to wait and see who hatches!  Thanks

WHOA!!!! How cool.

"March 20 – Mme. Owl victorious. The interloping starlings were dealt a serious setback this morning when Mme. Owl captured and killed one of them. It wasn’t the quick kill that any raptor strives for (a basic risk-management measure), but it got the job done. This is not only good news for Mme. Owl, who had a good breakfast and lunch out of it, and will probably be left alone by the local starlings for the rest of the season, but for the other native cavity nesting birds of the area, notably, in this case, the red-bellied woodpeckers."

you can WATCH it; go to the site
http://www.chrisowlcam.net/2014/#x20140320 (http://www.chrisowlcam.net/2014/#x20140320)
and click "View the movie (80.9 MB, MPEG-4 format)"
I'm astonished she pulled that off without damaging the eggs.
She does look quite fetching peeking out coyly from behind that wing, once the chaos is over.
 . . . but it isn't entirely over . . .

                   :o.

Geeze, I hope the eggs weren't damaged!  :surprise:

OMG!!!! That was awful!! Looks like that bird died a slow painful death!! She was quick, that momma as the Starling almost got away!!

It's kind of like a zombie picture at one point. Mom looks at the camera, "Whew, did you see THAT. . . " and then . . .

"April 1 – 12:38 AM CDT – One egg can be heard 'peeping,' so the hatching process is beginning."

The live cam is up now
http://www.chrisowlcam.net/2014/view-live.html (http://www.chrisowlcam.net/2014/view-live.html)
From what I understand, if you're still browsing with Internet Exploiter you might not be able to watch the motion version. Try anyway, I may have misunderstood.

I saw an owlet moving at 1:35 pm central time; around 3:30 I could swear I saw something else moving under there, as well as an eggshell. She may have 2 today.

I clearly see two chicks and a pip in a third egg!   :clap: :clap: :clap:

yep!! i was just about to post a picture of that.
What this virtuoso timing may well mean is that she somehow sensed -- back on the 14th or 15th, whenever -- that the one egg out of 5 was maturing too quickly and kept it uncovered for all those hours, then took it back. Too bizarre to comprehend!

No sound though?

not yet. He doesn't have a lot of money and has no support in this new setup (before he was on the University server), so he can't afford a lot. He's paying for it all himself.

Ah, OK, just checking that it wasn't me!  Thanks!

Egg no. 3 hatched at 8:04 PM. Mme. Owl seems to be postponing her constitutional this evening to provide the owlets with their first feedings.

Is she a pro or what? 3 hatchings in one day!

         :mbanana: :bguitar:

She is!! Don't tell DC, he'll want that too!  :secret2:

I suspected it a few hours ago, but just now I definitely saw 4 heads and one egg

(and assorted dead birds and mice - nice decor)

April 4 – It looks like egg no. 5 hatched today. There is now a smaller, lighter colored owlet among the other owlets.

5, should be interesting!! No snakes!!!  :surprise:

They eat texas blind snakes all the time!

Well if they are blind, they don't know what they are getting in to! As long as they eat the snakes and not the other way around!  :D

oh, dear.

                         :wub:

I just noticed that Chris has added a "donate" button asking for any amount at all to help defray the cost of the cam, which he is supporting entirely on his own this year. He writes

The cost of providing this site’s streaming video averages $19 per day, so far. If you can help offset that expense, please use the PayPal “Donate” button. Thanks!

yikes - $19 a day!

http://www.chrisowlcam.net/2014/ (http://www.chrisowlcam.net/2014/)

Those 5 critters are pretty funny at this stage!!  The general effect is of Brownian motion consisting mostly of falling down without standing up first. Every time I see it I can’t understand it: an owlet is already completely down, and it falls anyway.

An unusually orderly moment:

 :laugh:

Love these guys/gals.   :happy:

this one definitely squeaks louder than words.

LOVE tiny in the back...

the annual "what have I done????"  capture

Great picture.I love it !

I was hoping to find a shot of all 5, but all I can find is 4. Hope they're all still there!

Ooooohhh, hmmm. Hope so too! Probably under the pile!

...and the little one is MUCH littler, easy to miss in the crowd.
It hatched days after the other four.
In this capture it's in the front row and still looks tiny.

here's a clear one of all 5

Full house!

I'm still waiting to find one with at least 10 eyes to the cam, but in the meantime, these are nice

They grow so fast! Cute pics...love the eye expressions!

Chris writes:

April 19 – For the first time this year, an owlet not only made a serious effort at climbing, but succeeded, in as much as the perch was successfully perched upon. Either they just haven’t bothered to make any serious climbing attempts until now, I’ve somehow missed them, or this is a remarkable first attempt.  Regardless, the video will be even more interesting from here on out.

here's one I found of the event

Chris writes:
April 27 – An owlet found its way into the entry hole on the 26th, and many of the others soon followed its example. This is, in effect, a signal that the first owlet will leave the nest inside of a week. Data from past years (2013, 2012) indicates first exit (presumably by the eldest owlet) early or late on its 29th day. That suggests April 30 of this year.  I am not ready, but it’s going to happen anyway, and real-soon-now. Yikes.

the one I caught (funny owl butt sticking out):

I haven't had time to be reviewing the daily 500 captures as in previous years, but here are a couple, including a "hairy eyeball" shot for Ei:

AWWW! Thanks for thinking of me!

How did he manage to get them lined up in size order like that LOL!

Wow! Where did the time go?  They grew up too fast!  Love the group shot...so darn cute!

Chris writes:

April 29 – 6:00 AM – The weather forecast for today is good (ten degrees cooler than yesterday, but still clear), so, with time flying as it is wont to do, my plan is to take down the nest box this afternoon. That’ll let me attach the owlet rail, clean the camera windows, and take this year’s owlet group photo. The live video will continue throughout that process, but will mostly show an empty nest box, so that should be exciting.


three from yesterday

Was just about to post that...

Here's one I spotted...

HAHAHAHAHAHA. feathery ceilings are the new black.

I like this one--the one owlet seems to be trying to gesture to illustrate a particularly delicate point, and its 2 siblings are, respectively, saying,
 
"where on earth did you get that pedicure?"

and

"eeeeeeew -- that is the grossest splinter I've ever seen!!"

the other two are checking for text messages

I am glad to have the archive there...no time to watch in real time...

I like the archive setup a lot -- if you put it on the highest speed, you can scan through the 500 dailies in a few minutes. Not that I've even had time for THAT every day . . .

Class picture time!

the first one

Did you see his tweet we blew up the server LOL!

Saw that!  :laugh:

they clearly do play dead when they're scared. Here's what happened when Chris opened the box to take them out for a couple minutes while he did maintenance to help make fledging safer (and to take the annual group portrait)

Love following these little owls.  Thanks for posting the updates here Dale!   :clap: :thumbsup: :wave:

I did not know they would play dead like that. Interesting!

From Twitter:

Owlet 1 just successful flew from the nest box tree about 50 feet into a tree next to one if hackberries at the back of the yard. Wow.

Chris W. Johnson @ChrisOwlCam
Owlet 1 (or some owlet) has left the nest and is sitting on the owlet rail.

Chris W. Johnson @ChrisOwlCam
Owlet 1 has left the rail and is now in the nest box tree.

and then the flight that Kris posted about.

that is a great first flight.
best of luck to all the little owlets.

Class picture day...the movie...

http://www.chrisowlcam.net/2014/20140429/movies/20140429-192040-CDT.mp4 (http://www.chrisowlcam.net/2014/20140429/movies/20140429-192040-CDT.mp4)

http://www.chrisowlcam.net/2014/20140429/movies/20140429-193504-CDT.mp4 (http://www.chrisowlcam.net/2014/20140429/movies/20140429-193504-CDT.mp4)

April 30 – The first owlet left the nest this evening at 8:37 PM CDT. After walking to the far end of the owlet rail, it leapt a short distance to a nearly vertical limb of the tree, climbed to its broken top, where one of its parents watched from a small, remaining branch, then jump-flapped its way across to a taller limb that leans into the back yard. The owlet climbed to the broken top of that limb (even higher than the top of the first limb to which it climbed), and, with hardly a pause to consider the situation, leapt into the air, targeting a short tree growing beneath one of the hackberries at the back of the yard. It must have covered fifty feet in that flight, and it lost altitude the whole way since its feathers aren’t yet sufficiently developed to let it generate net lift, but the flight was a success. Both adults observed the whole thing from the hackberry that overshadowed the little tree, but there was nothing they could, or needed to, do to help. It just worked splendidly.

I’ve been wondering for years how the owlets cross the gap from the nest box tree to the hackberries at the back of the yard, where they always end-up. I think I have my answer. The only part I haven’t seen is the transfer from the small tree to the hackberry, but that should be a simple matter of climbing and a bit of jump-flapping; trivial compared to the feat it had already pulled-off.

Returning to yesterday’s activities, I haven’t gone through all of the stills taken on the 29th in order to find the best possible owlet group portrait, but I have looked at the movies I shot, and links to them are included below. The portrait will look a lot like what you see in the movies: two cooperative owlets, two lumplets, and one preoccupied with hatching a plot for world domination. Every owl has its own personality, but I was surprised that three of them were so consistently reserved, which hasn’t been an issue in past years.

BTW, you can see me attacked by one of the adult owls in one of these movies. That would be really interesting, if “visible,” in this case, meant more than a blur passing through six frames (1/5th of a second). Anyway, as my increasingly free-form hair style suggests, I was attacked a number of times during this process (all strikes to the head; hence the hair issue). And, of course, I deserved the attacks and all the pricks of owlet talons in my hands; it’s the price one pays for interacting with this type of wildlife, and it’s a bargain as far as I’m concerned.

One little event that fascinated me: After the owlets had been returned to the nest, the sun had set, and I’d nearly finished cleaning-up after this process, one of the adults chose to perch where the owlets had been photographed. It watched me as I finished the cleanup without a trace of concern (or obvious interest), something it could more readily have done from any of the surrounding trees. The adults don’t normally perch so close to the ground (safety is up in the trees), so I can’t help but wonder if it had a specific reason for wanting to be on that perch, something like experiencing a childhood memory of sitting on that same perch for the camera. Basic curiosity is a simpler explanation, but, for whatever reason, that’s not how it struck me at the time.

Make of that what you will.

excellent picture!!!

and thanks for posting the movie links and associated text!!

The movie was great...they are so cute!  The 2nd flew yesterday!

yesterday evening:

Chris W. Johnson @ChrisOwlCam
Owlet 2 has left the nest.

Chris W. Johnson @ChrisOwlCam
Owlet 2 is in the nest box tree.

Chris W. Johnson @ChrisOwlCam
Owlet 2 just flew to the other hackberry tree - a much more difficult flight than owlet 1's.

The movies are excellent!  What gorgeous creatures!   :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:

the remaining 3 have lined up waiting to get out (or just to be first to get the june bugs mom brings in)

a small drama, with props:

Chris W. Johnson @ChrisOwlCam
Owlet 3 is out of the nest box.

Chris W. Johnson @ChrisOwlCam
Owlets 1 and 2 can be seen climbing in the hackberries. Owlet 3 is still on the owlet rail.

Chris W. Johnson @ChrisOwlCam
Owlet 3 is in the nest box tree.

Chris W. Johnson @ChrisOwlCam
Owl attack took off my glasses. Can't see a thing, including where the glasses might be.

Chris W. Johnson @ChrisOwlCam
Found glasses. Owlet 3 still in nest box tree.

Chris W. Johnson @ChrisOwlCam
Owlet 3 has used the same path through the nest box tree as owlet 1 did. But hasn’t decided where to go from there.

Chris W. Johnson @ChrisOwlCam
Owlet 4 left the nest. I was sleeping, or I'd've noticed a thing like that.

Chris W. Johnson @ChrisOwlCam
Found an owlet that I presume to be no. 4, safe in a fork of the nest box tree.

Chris W. Johnson @ChrisOwlCam
Owlet 5 is currently receiving assistance from Mme. Owl in eating a mouse.

That last late hatch is good this year..we get a little more time with them...

"May 3 – Editorial – I’m fascinated to learn, from The Des Moines Register (http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2014/04/28/decorah-eagle-cam-bird-watching/8357953/http://) via USA Today, that a fellow who put a bald eagle cam’ on the ’net back in 2008 was responsible for starting the practice of putting nest cams on the Internet (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/28/bald-eagle-bird-cams/8409933/). I guess the eight years I’d been operating this cam’ (and some of you were watching it) before 2008 somehow don’t count, either due to a startling ignorance and/or ego on the part of Bob Anderson, or standard journalistic quality controls (roughly none) at The Des Moines Register.

(How many times have you read an article in any newspaper on a subject in which you are highly knowledgable and not found cringe-worthy mistakes? That's what I mean by “standard journalistic quality controls.” That being the case, it seems more likely that The Des Moines Register is to blame than Mr. Anderson, but who knows?)

Seriously, this isn’t a tough issue to to sort out: just talk to the person, V. Dziadosz, who created and has maintained the worldwide list of nest cams  (http://www.viewbirds.com/)since 1998, or lookup that site on the Internet Archive (bearing in mind that the site was at a different location prior 2012 (https://web.archive.org/web/19991011135451*/http://www.pitt.edu/%7Edziadosz/)), and the empty claim of hatching the idea of nest cams in 2008 falls apart."

Indeed. "Standard journalistic controls" I suspect. Bob Anderson is well respected and I'm certain more than aware of many other bird web cams like...oh, I don't know...us...for many, many years before 2008.

Like the probable misquote of Craig Koppie in Delaware the other day.

I guess it's all good in the end...more awareness of the birds and their websites. But it doesn't really take a whole lot of research to find out the truth.

PFFFT!

Thanks, Ei, for posting that, I was about to.
pffffft indeed.

May 3 – Owlet no. 4 left the nest at 3:42 AM (on the same night owlet no. 3 left the nest, just on a different side of midnight). Neither 3 nor 4 made the remarkable flights to the hackberry trees at the back of my yard that nos. 1 and 2 did. Instead, they headed off to the side, first into a crepe myrtle tree that abuts the nest box tree, and from there through two of my neighbor's trees (in the latter of which they spent the day to the consternation of many of the local songbirds). After sunset, their dual food begging from that tree made their location clear.

Owlets 1 and 2 remain, presumably, in the hackberries and adjoining trees, since those provide much better cover and far more scope for movement. (Also, every year's owlets end-up in those hackberries, probably for the aforementioned reasons.)

Owlet no. 4’s exit left no. 5 alone in the nest box. Rather than encouraging no. 5 to leave the nestbox, Mme. Owl seems to have gone to extra lengths to look after him/her in the nest, delivering a mouse that night, and visiting the nest box on three occasions during the day. (Which is probably the reason that the local songbirds were aware of the location of nos. 3 and 4; Mme. Owl was probably roosting with them in between her visits to the nest box. If so, her mate would have been roosting with nos. 1 and 2.)

owlet 5, 11 pm central time - ain't going nowhere

He looks pretty proud to be King of the roost now!  :laugh:

owlet 5's day alone yesterday, according to the dailies, was mostly spent inspecting his own legs, with short breaks for climbing the walls and mugging for the cam

just now, all alone

Awww, he looks lonely.   :(

he's still there, too.

Chris writes:

I'm all for owlet 5 waiting until it is good and ready to leave, but I'm beginning to wonder if it'll have cable installed instead.

in reverse order:

Chris W. Johnson @ChrisOwlCam
A minimum of four owlets were visible in the far hackberry, all in a begging contest for food. I suspect all five are there.
14m

 Chris W. Johnson @ChrisOwlCam
Owlet 5 disappeared from the nest box tree while I was tweeting. Best guess is that it took no. 2’s direct path to the far hackberry.
28m

 Chris W. Johnson @ChrisOwlCam
Owlet 5 is in the nest box tree, and just went  ... Somewhere....
34m

 Chris W. Johnson @ChrisOwlCam
Owlet 5 is out.

they grow up so fast. Good luck little ones  :wub: