Adventures With Mel & Syd: Pacific Loon cam

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

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Pacific Loon cam - Alaska

About the Connors Lake Pacific Loons

This loon nest is in Anchorage, Alaska, on a small lake right next to the Anchorage International Airport (map). Each year for the past nine years, cam host Jean Tam has broadcast the nesting season of these gorgeous birds—using an artificial nesting island to make the camera set-up possible (see "About the Artificial Island" below). The constant stream of airplanes overhead doesn’t seem to bother them, nor does the adjacent highway or the off-leash dog park surrounding the lake—truly these are “urban” loons.

Pacific Loons are thought to be monogamous within a breeding season and may remain paired in subsequent years as well. The same female has used this island since 2003, when she was banded (look for her bands: blue over white on the left leg; a metal band on the right). Jean suspects that several unbanded males have been her mates in different years based on differences in behavior. Both sexes share incubation. Males and females look similar, but the female is slightly smaller and each year’s male has seemed to be much more alert on the nest than the female.

The nestlings will remain in the nest until both eggs hatch and the nestlings are dry, at which point they will be brooded on the nest for about a week before they depart. Over the next seven weeks or so, the loon chicks follow their parents around the lake learning to swim and forage before fledging.