One things with nest study, one never knows whether a nesting will progress
smoothly or not. I returned to the London Ranger Station pines yesterday hoping
to find the Brown-headed Nuthatches feeding fledglings, as by my calculations
they should have been out of the nest as of sometime last week. To the contrary
the pair was still coming back and forth to the nest but there seemed to be
something amiss. They kept bringing food items, going inside and then coming
back out with the food still in their bills, and they were no longer removing
fecal sacs. Later I saw one was apparently taking out a piece of nesting
material. My guess is the young where taken by a predator either in the nest or
or after fledging or they expired for some other reason. The pair seems to be
in the transition between not realizing exactly what happened (as they kept
carrying food in) and going back to starting over again with nesting. I could
be wrong but that is my best guess.
Frank RenfrowFort Thomas, KY
