By Robin Brumm
I had the afternoon off for an appointment on Friday, so decided to make a quick trip to Decorah to see what Mom and DM2 were up to. I figured if we had eggs there would be somebirdy there. If not, I would be watching an empty nest.
February 26, 2021: Mom incubating at N3
When I got to N3, I didn’t see anybody. I wasn’t sure if I was happy about that or not! I took a few pictures of the nest, and waited. I looked at my picture on my camera and zoomed way in. WAIT…There was a beak sticking out from one of the trunks! So I changed my position to get a different perspective, and saw somebirdy laying in the nest! I believe it was Mom, which was confirmed a couple of minutes later, when DM2 flew into the nest with some grasses. Mom stood up and flew to a nearby branch.
February 26, 2021: Mom and DM2 at N3
DM2 moved some grasses, but I noticed both parents were very alert. All of a sudden Mom and then DM2 started calling out. I looked up and an adult eagle flew into the area. Mom flew off after the eagle and DM2 followed. They both escorted the eagle out of the area. After a couple of minutes, DM2 flew back in and laid down in the nest. A few minutes later, Mom flew in with some more nesting material. Mom stayed on the nest, while DM2 flew in and out a few times. Mom stood on the nest for a long time. Eventually she put her head down, and looked like she could have moved some nesting materials and then rolled an egg, and then she laid down. She was fairly alert and was looking around. I stayed about 20 more minutes or so, and then had to leave. It sure looked like Mom and DM2 were incubating at least 1 egg.
As I was driving home, I was wondering how many eggs mom has laid already. I hope she will lay three again this year, but unfortunately we won’t know until we see the little bobbleheads peeking over the edge. I did ask her while I was there, but she wouldn’t answer me…if only I could get Mom and DM2 to answer my texts!!
Amy’s note: Thanks so much to Robin Brumm for her wonderful report! I hope you enjoy it as much as we did! While we can’t give an egg-laying date and time like we usually do, we believe Mom laid egg number one on Wednesday or Thursday evening, based on Robin’s Friday observation and reports from Scott Iverson and Dave Kester. We’ll miss watching them this year, but we wish both of them the best of luck and we’ll continue to report as we can. After some discussion about what to call the new nest, we went with N3, since three comes after two. All these years later, naming remains a challenge!
The Raptor Resource Project