Hi everyone it's Lily again, I work with the US forest service here in the
Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area
and welcome to osprey watch part 3. So last week when we came here we checked
on our two nests and then we also found a third,
so I've decided to give these nests each their own nickname.
So if you remember that original nest that we saw last week a crow came and
visited that nest and tried to take some of the fish so
I'm going to nickname that nest site the crow's nest, and then we've got the
one right next door to it which has those
teenage birds in it so we're going to call that the teenage nest.
Those birds are quite a bit older and they're kind of inside the platform
itself and then the nest that we just found
last week where the bird kept bringing back chunks
of moss, we're going to call that the moss nest
so this way when I'm referring to the nest I'll say you know, here we are
at the moss nest and you'll know in your head that that's that set of babies.
So now that we've got those nicknames for them let's go check out and see how
they're doing!
All right, here we are back with the moss
nest family. You can see the chicks have almost doubled in size.
So there's still two of them which is great
and they're starting to get a little bit of coloration on their backs,
it's a little bit hard to see because they kind of actually blend in with the
nesting material but if you'll remember last time we could
only really see their heads and that little one moving around.
Alright so it looks like we're here right at lunchtime,
so the male just brought in a fish you can see how active those chicks are now.
It's quite a large fish, it's a good catch!
So now you can really see how big those babies are
and they're sitting right next to the female mouths open
ready to be given some food.
Lots of good action today!
The one on the left you can see is actually standing so when
the babies are born their legs are really really weak
and as they get older they're able to actually stand up a little bit
but then what they do is sit back on what's called their hock joint which is
that first joint in their legs and they kind of sit
down almost like they're kneeling with their talons in the front of their
bodies.
So we'll leave the moss family and we'll let them eat their lunch and we'll go
head down to the teenage family and the crow family.
So here we are at the teenage nest and one of the parents, that bird in the
middle, just came in, flew in and you can see there's one of
the babies stretching wings, quite large!
So there we see one of the babies doing some practice flaps.
So at this stage it's kind of called a brancher,
so they're not necessarily able to fly but what they're doing is flapping their
wings to build those pectoral muscles so once
those feathers are fully grown in they'll have enough enough muscle to do
some sustained flights.
And that one parent definitely has quite a large fish
I'm wondering if he's going to eat some of it himself before giving it to the
babies.
And I believe out of all three of these nests, the babies that are in this crow
family are the youngest of all of them so it's
possible that they're still kind of in that
pancaking phase. It's hard to tell from just the
tiny movements I see here on the left side of the screen.
So this is giving you a really clear shot of that adult,
you can see how standing on that platform,
those feet are quite large. Oh there's some movement in the nest,
there we go!
So compared to when we last saw them, the crow family's babies have grown in quite
a few feathers! You can see that they're kind of less
fluffy when they move around, this tells me that those adult feathers
are growing in.
All right I've got two babies that I can see right now,
you can see their heads.
There we go that's a great view.
Oh there's three, all right everybody's still here!
Thank you so much for watching osprey watch part three!
We'll be back shortly and maybe we'll get to see
some of these little babies attempt to fly!