Adventures With Mel & Syd: BBC Nature

SNN (ScrollingNetworkNews) ✿ ✿ Our Mel and Sydney returned to their nesting box with plenty of bonding occurring..but after 2.5 months of Sydney in the box from Dec 2013 to mid Feb 2014, the lack of prey gifts from Mel ( perhaps due to the severe and historic drought underway in California)and they have forgone the nesting process this year as many other raptors ✿ Compared to other owls of similar size, the Barn Owl has a much higher metabolic rate, requiring relatively more food. Pound for pound, Barn Owls consume more rodents – often regarded as pests by humans – than possibly any other creature. ✿ We remind viewers that sometimes owlets may not survive - the parents will dispose of things in "The Owl Way" -viewer discretion is advised, this is nature and the "Owl way". ✿ ~ ✿ “Animals, like us, are living souls. They are not things. They are not objects. Neither are they human. Yet they mourn. They love. They dance. They suffer. They know the peaks and chasms of being.” ― Gary Kowalski, The Souls of Animals ✿ Each species is a masterpiece, a creation assembled with extreme care and genius." ~ E.O. Wilson

Sunday, June 10, 2012

BBC Nature - Dyfi Osprey Project

Those of you that watched the live streaming around 3pm saw that one chick had clearly died and the eldest chick was too weak to hold it's head up. Nora was on the nest and wouldn't feed her chick as she did not see the the food begging behaviour that she would expect. We have watched two chicks die in the nest during the last 9 days, we didn't want to see the last one go.

We took the difficult decision to go to the nest and remove both the dead chick and the one that was barely alive and try and feed it. After around 15 minutes we finally got him to take some fish. He/she was shaking and could not lift it's head. After around 30 minutes we had its crop around half full and he had stopped shaking - we immediately put him back in the nest and around 5 minutes later Nora was feeding him.
Intervention like this is not the norm and will, most likely, attract some criticism. At the moment, we feel we had no option but to intervene in this way.

Nora sitting on the nest