Screenshots from Sääksilive Osprey nests. The nesting season has come to an end, and the birds have left. Well, the ospreys, at least; here are some visitors in addition to a few more screenshots of the nests' residents. Last screenshot includes fish prey.
and one of the previous in the bottom right corner.
And a nocturnal non-bird visitor: Pine marten (Martes martes). Not a welcome guest during nesting, but with the ospreys away, a beautiful animal to spot.
Some thoughts on the season, now that it's done.
Some thoughts on the season, now that it's done.
I got really attached to the nest #4 osplets this year, they were each such a character. It's unfortunate for the clutch to not have a happy ending, but it's a possible outcome to expect when watching wild animal life. Despite the rehabbers' best efforts, N2/USU sadly didn't survive, so this is the first season their mother Nuppu doesn't have a fledgling make it to migration. Her previous seasons that I've watched have had their difficulties, too, but hopefully Myy/UPM (2021), Una/UNA (2022), and Lumo/HWL (2023) are safe and healthy somewhere out there, living the life that wasn't meant to be for their siblings this year. Myy may very well have had chicks of her own this year.
Nemo has also been such a cute osprey dad this year, it's been fun to watch him figure out parenting and get so good at it. Last year was probably his first nesting season, and he's come a long way from being unsure about what to do with an egg Nuppu left him alone with for the first time, to successfully feeding chicks this summer. And for that matter, Nuppu herself has grown into a very capable osprey mom.
Nemo has also been such a cute osprey dad this year, it's been fun to watch him figure out parenting and get so good at it. Last year was probably his first nesting season, and he's come a long way from being unsure about what to do with an egg Nuppu left him alone with for the first time, to successfully feeding chicks this summer. And for that matter, Nuppu herself has grown into a very capable osprey mom.
One thing about Nuppu's behavior with her chicks that may not have been the most pleasant to see, but has nonetheless been interesting to witness, is her tendency to get aggressive towards them around the fledging of her oldest chick in the clutch. It's seemed pretty confusing, but with the hindsight that two of her chicks were caught from the nest or near it by an eagle not long after, and that the same happened to one chick the other year this behavior was observed (2022) at this same nest (her first nesting season was at nest #3 instead), someone at the nestcam's livestream chat brought up the idea that there may be a connection, and I think that would actually make sense.
Maybe this is her way of urging the chicks to leave the nest ASAP now that she's seen they're old enough to fly, because she can tell there's a predator nearby waiting for an opportunity to strike. I didn't follow the nestcam as closely in 2023 around fledging, so I'm not sure how she behaved then, but she did lose one chick to predation then, too, and another avoided such a fate by moving to nest #1. This may be a particular hazard in this territory that Nuppu has noticed, and is dealing with in her own way, while some other aspects of the territory still make staying there worth the risk. Only the birds know for sure, but that's one possible explanation.
And not that any nest or territory is perfectly safe, as was seen this year at Nuppu's old nest #3. This season had almost all clutches fail at these nests. But I don't think the ending makes watching things like first-time mother Taika learning how to care for her chick a waste of time, and hopefully next year she and Tuulos will have better luck, and Nuppu&Nemo and the pair at nest #5/LS, too. Hopefully next year some osprey pair decides to settle in at nest #2, perhaps local bachelor TXP would have better luck wooing the ladies there.
Maybe this is her way of urging the chicks to leave the nest ASAP now that she's seen they're old enough to fly, because she can tell there's a predator nearby waiting for an opportunity to strike. I didn't follow the nestcam as closely in 2023 around fledging, so I'm not sure how she behaved then, but she did lose one chick to predation then, too, and another avoided such a fate by moving to nest #1. This may be a particular hazard in this territory that Nuppu has noticed, and is dealing with in her own way, while some other aspects of the territory still make staying there worth the risk. Only the birds know for sure, but that's one possible explanation.
And not that any nest or territory is perfectly safe, as was seen this year at Nuppu's old nest #3. This season had almost all clutches fail at these nests. But I don't think the ending makes watching things like first-time mother Taika learning how to care for her chick a waste of time, and hopefully next year she and Tuulos will have better luck, and Nuppu&Nemo and the pair at nest #5/LS, too. Hopefully next year some osprey pair decides to settle in at nest #2, perhaps local bachelor TXP would have better luck wooing the ladies there.
They both startle each other and fly away.
Ospreys feeding chicks other than their own offspring has been seen at these nests before, as I mentioned above and in the post about Ulpukka first arriving, with Eura and his previous mate Eine letting Nemo and Nuppu's chick Lumo from nest #4 invite herself to the dinner table at nest #1 in 2023, and the same year Roni at nest #5/LS feeding a fledgling who showed up after Roni's mate Sara and one of their two chicks had already left. That one had been banded in Sweden, so she had already traveled for quite the distance before this "rest stop". A chick begging for food at your nest is a chick that needs feeding, says instinct, and it doesn't seem that they can count or tell their own chicks apart from any other. Which is fortunate for allowing orphaned chicks to be fostered at wild nests when necessary, like what happened with two chicks from this nest in 2021 after their mother died and they were still too young for their father to raise them alone.
The chicks at any nest will each defend their claim to a share of the available food as they best can, as seen with Ulpukka's clashes with Lumme and Utu this year, but the parents let the chicks figure out their pecking order by themselves, as they do with sibling rivalry among their own offspring, too.
Raptors adopting chicks has sometimes been observed to extend even beyond their own species, a couple of documented cases I know of being Bald eagles raising Red-tailed hawk chicks to fledging alongside their eaglets:
one in 2017, another in 2022 at a camera nest.
In those cases the hawklet seems to have been brought in as prey, but alive and at least mostly unharmed, and when it instinctively started begging for food it got recategorized from something to be fed to chicks to a chick that needs to be fed, since the two species' food begging behaviors are similar enough for the eagle parents' instincts to recognize.
Raptors. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Anyway, here's also one more screenshot of Lumme from before she migrated, that I forgot to post before:
It's from her last day at the nest. I guess it got overshadowed by the more dramatic events later that day.
And for comparison, a screenshot from her first day at the nest. :)
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