Yesterday's Daily Update saw 18 pages of quite frankly Ospreytastic input. The young male who EJ has taken to, impressed us with two well sized fish deliveries. As we come into a new day, EJ is on her eggs but she has a slightly restless look. Perhaps we may see a third egg soon.
Warning! This post contains atrocious spelling, and terrible grammar. Approach with extreme edginess.
Junior has had enough and he is away, eggs home alone.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
He's back
He's back :) and settling on the eggs!
Birdie's DU Summaries 2018 https://www.imagicat.com/
He is back, on the eggs again.
Now the sound is off and on!! And now the whirly wheel!!
Cam went down there. Back after refresh. Junior still on eggs.
CRinger said: Hello Moffer, and everybody else who's around. Re the egg laying:- I've been suspicious right from the start about the 1st egg, which EJ didn't attempt to incubate at all, for whatever reason. The 2nd egg - I wonder if that was the result of the very brief mating with the first male that came along, whom she very briefly accepted. Now that she has had repeated matings with Junior, maybe she will lay another fresh clutch, all Juniors, and unrelated to egg#2,in another few days. Just wondering.....
Hello Moffer, and everybody else who's around. Re the egg laying:- I've been suspicious right from the start about the 1st egg, which EJ didn't attempt to incubate at all, for whatever reason. The 2nd egg - I wonder if that was the result of the very brief mating with the first male that came along, whom she very briefly accepted. Now that she has had repeated matings with Junior, maybe she will lay another fresh clutch, all Juniors, and unrelated to egg#2,in another few days. Just wondering.....
That is a very interesting theory and I can see the logic in the argument completely. What concerns me, if it proves to be correct, is that often the 'quality' e.g. egg thickness of the second clutch has often been shown to be inferior to the quality of the first clutch, resulting in poor hatching rates of the eggs and also survival of any young that hatch from second clutches. If the second clutch is 3 and the first clutch has stopped at 2 and all 5 hatch then I would not want to be in Junior's shoes as provider for mother and chicks.
[/quote]I think we're still within the first clutch. I can only assume from her behaviour that the first egg isn't viable - I've not seen her fail to incubate a freshly laid egg before. The second egg looks much more hopeful as she's looked after it from the word go - I can, quite honestly, see her laying another two. We know from the events of 2013 that the third and fourth egg can be just as good as the first and second - the only things that have changed since then are EJ's age (and bear in mind all three of her eggs hatched last year), the likely father and the amount of intrusions on the nest.
Our herring gulls are red listed birds. Think about that the next time you hear some flaming idiot calling for a cull of them.
I wonder if EJ has gone for a flight to wear off excess energy after that fish.
Aww
Such a serious face