[Bristol-Birds] early Great Blue Heron nestling
- From: "Richard Knight" <rknight8@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "bristol-birds" <bristol-birds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2011 17:22:50 -0400
On the Herndon Chapter field trip yesterday (12 March), we observed
a very small nestling in one of the Great Blue Heron nests at Ft. Henry
Dam. At the time I thought that was a rather early date, at least for
northeast Tenn.
Little did I know just how early until today when I looked at the Tenn.
Breeding Bird Atlas (Nicholson 1997). Although it was compiled from
a fairly small sample, it lists the early date for nestlings of Great Blues
in Tenn as 27 April. Even the early date listed for eggs was 19 March.
Great Blues have an incubation period of 28 days. So the egg(s) in
this nest had to have been laid on or before 12 Feb. As you will recall,
Feb was milder than normal this year.
The first successful nesting by Great Blues in the 5-county area was
just back in 2001, although they had nested in Hawkins Co for a few
years prior to that.
Rick Knight
Johnson City, TN
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