Fledge Watch – Susan Conway June 20; 1pm – 5pm
There really isn’t as much to report as I had hoped for – I arrived at 12:30, talked with the other watchers that were there (Carol P, Jeanne, Jim P, Lisa McK, Barb, Dan, Shaky, Carrie, and others that my poor brain can’t recall right now), most of whom left around 1:00. Barb and Dan stayed with me (thank you!), despite the less than desirable weather. It was quite windy and mostly cloudy (and cool), and I was sort of glad to see that there wasn’t much action on the tower; if one of the girls had fledged she would have had a very tough time getting back. It’s funny, since we couldn’t see Linn most of us thought that she had made it down to the playpen to join the other 3 – little did we know that she was resting under the nestbox! What a goof!
After a long while, Dan left, but Barb kept me company for the rest of the afternoon. Around 3 the weather started to brighten, the wind shifted direction a bit, and we realized that moving into the sun was now a better option than it had been. The girls seemed to sense the change as well, flapping a bit but mostly moving from floodlight to floodlight. We did periodically see all 4 girls – at least in part – many times at that point. Kaver left at about 2:45, and was gone for so long that at about 4:15 Mariah took off to the south, but after 15 minutes she returned without food as well. We hadn’t really seen a food exchange or obvious feeding all afternoon. Not to worry, though, those girls are doing just fine!
At about 5pm, Mariah took off and met up with Kaver a bit to the south of us – by that time Barb had left, and Lucy and Liza O had joined me. We all hoped to see a food exchange, with Mariah and Kaver flying circles around/above/below each other, and at one point they did make contact and eventually sort of chased each other back to the tower. Once there, they continued to chase each other until we all began to wonder if it really WAS Kaver that had come back, it certainly didn’t look like friendly flying! Finally one (Mariah?) flew into the nestbox area as if she had food, and the other landed up above, so it must have been Kaver who came back – we theorized that she wanted the food that Kaver brought back, and he didn’t want her to have it… who knows. Watching from cam1 on Shaky’s site, it looks like the three on the ground huddled together for a bit, probably eating!
I’ll leave the rest to Liza, she’s the official watcher as of 5pm and I already stole her first story (sorry!)
As for me, I didn’t tear myself away until almost 7, and by that time many folks had come out for the evening watch. I encourage anyone in the area to come down and join us, we have a lot of fun.
Well, maybe tomorrow one will take to the skies – that’s what Dan has been predicting all along, I guess we’ll have to just wait and see.
susan c
