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Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Trouble at the Owl Cam?

While there's nothing I can do about it, I'm more than a little worried about the Valmont Power Plant Great Horned Owl nest. While perusing the daily pix from the last 24 hours I was dismayed to see that the owl left the eggs at 2:46 pm yesterday afternoon. Instead of a short break, the owl remained off the eggs for the rest of the daylight hours. She was mostly was at the nest, but hung out on the edge of the box or on the perch. The owl came back onto the eggs at 7:10 pm but only incubated for about a half-hour, departing again at 7:42 pm and staying out until 5:46 am this morning. If my figuring is right, that is only 32 minutes of incubating in a 15 hour period- can't be good, can it? It wasn't bitterly cold last night but it did frost- I wonder if the eggs can withstand so many cold un-incubated hours. Maybe the male died or split the scene and mom had to hunt for herself? Anyway, she's back now so the nest isn't abandoned. We'll see if the eggs survived the neglect down the road...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was wondering if I was the only one worried about the owls. We haven't seen the male at the nest for maybe a week now? I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

birdchick said...

I was worried too! I kept hoping when I was checking the daily pix that maybe he camera was on freeze and showing the same frame over and over.

I was also wondering about all that snow melting in the box and if that would affect incubation.

dguzman said...

Oh no.... I can't handle owl death.