3/20/2016
Hello birders,
This evening, in the unusually cold 41 degrees F, when checking on our
Mallard nest, we found six eggs (she has been laying one progressively each
day - the sixth egg was laid today), but three of the eggs were punctured
with a small hole in each egg (see attached photos). Unfortunately, our
memory card was full, and our Audubon BirdCam we set up on the nest did not
catch anything relating to the damaging of the eggs. The eggs were pretty
cold, suggesting that the female had not been on for several hours. She has
been incubating part-time, but on cold days like this, she has been
incubating more often. No adults were present in or around the pond and
nest site when we got the SD card, but this morning we saw two intruder
males plus our male on the the pond, and our Audubon BirdCam revealed the
female incubating . They were not fighting, but as we were at church all
morning, we could easily have missed a fight. We have observed several
harsh fights in the past few days with another male that was trying to
copulate with our female.
On a lighter note, our Eastern Bluebirds are almost finished with their
nest, and will probably be starting to lay their clutch soon. We have
noticed that they have been adding on to the nest slower and slower, and
have not seen any building activity today, but we checked, and it is
practically done. Here is a picture of the nest.
IMG_0008.JPG
<https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7IE3J6kBFsjN1dYbWx4T05Ed2c/view?usp=drive_web>
If any of you have some ideas on what could have happened to the Mallard
nest, please let us know.
Good birding,
David and Jonathan Lugo
Washington County
Jonesborough, TN
IMG_0016.JPG
<https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7IE3J6kBFsjQkJTLW5KWVdXeW8/view?usp=drive_web>
IMG_0020.JPG
<https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7IE3J6kBFsjREpZclhRNm5UdjA/view?usp=drive_web>
IMG_0021.JPG
<https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7IE3J6kBFsjYktiOFY5MTVJZkk/view?usp=drive_web>
For the past few days, our cam has been getting some good photos and
videos of the Mallard nest, and we attached a video of the female Mallard
pealing bark off the nest tree to cover the eggs when she was not on the
nest.
WSBC0163.AVI
<https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7IE3J6kBFsjQm5adlpWeGZvcGs/view?usp=drive_web>
