Did the eaglets get enough to eat today? It’s an evergreen question, especially when you see the little bobbleheads shivering in the snow, tumbling over, and wrestling one another instead of eating. Fortunately, Mr. North and DNF are perched at the peak of provisioning! They fed the terrific two thirteen times today, with twelve feedings going to DNF and one going to Mr. North. Wrestlemania or not, the eaglets ate well, with eleven feedings for DN17 and eight for DN18. Don’t let their antics fool you – those tiny bulging crops beneath their downy white feathers point to plenty of provender for both!
I checked my event planner today and April is filling up! We’re penciled in bald eagle hatch at Trempealeau and Fort St. Vrain for April 4th and April 10, and goose hatch at N1 for April 13. The Leap of Faith, aka the Big Jump, should follow a day or two later! Stay tuned – we’ve got a whole lot of shimmying, hatching, and shenanigans going on!
Decorah North Eagles
March 26, 2024: DN17 and DN18 both eat fish snack – https://youtu.be/CRqcoPA6yLs?si=WZ3BGhaPfL4nTxDe. Were the eaglets getting busy in the rumpus room? DNF is brooding low to the nest. At 19 seconds, she looks down and raises up a bit before getting up to prepare lunch. Although the terrific two weren’t all wrestled out, they took a break to eat, lunging hungrily at the morsels held in DNF’s beak in between the occasional takedown. Meal over, Mombrella settles back over them. Keep it quiet, you two!
March 26, 2024: Under my Mombrella! DNF comes into the nest, feathers damp with snow and rain. The bloodstain on her face is slowly washing away.
In the first week of life, eaglets experience an astonishing growth spurt, increasing their weight from a mere 3 ounces to approximately 16 ounces. This remarkable surge in size represents a fivefold increase in their weight, reflecting the meticulous care and parental provisioning provided by Mr. North and DNF.
March 26, 2024: Cute overload! DN18, left; DN17, right.
March 26, 2024: DN17 and DN18 are busy bonking instead of eating: https://youtu.be/bMc8nCt30fU?si=drXHLuhVOUv4r2rO and Bonking Bobbleheads at Decorah North: https://youtu.be/2He0_oVhwOQ?si=MC1PLSH-3SPfpppN. The battling babybots are busy beak bonking instead of eating in both these videos. As DNF looks on and attempts to offer fish bites (“How about a snack?”) the eaglets practice their wrestling skills. At 2:55 into the video, DN18 reaches out for a bite, only to drop it on DN17’s head. The eaglet gets it back, but loses it again in a takedown! At 3:37, DNF reaches out with a morsel and D17 gets it. D17 also gets the next bite, but D18 recovers the lost morsel and eagles it down! Once the bonking stage is over, the terrific two are going to be the strongest eaglets around!
While the oldest/largest usually occupies the peak of the peaglet pecking order, these two seem pretty evenly matched! https://youtu.be/u9YtPmc4heg?si=-ZYqhl_XKjNWLN7H
March 26, 2024: Mr. North needs to eat too! After stocking the pan-tree full of fish, he decided to go fishing there instead of in the stream.
March 26, 2024: Mr. North goes fishing in the nest – https://youtu.be/_ZNCv4sG-9Q?si=XVmRZ6JkNEUXx2HD. Mr. North’s fabulous flying fishwagon sometimes delivers fish…and sometimes takes them away!
March 26, 2024: Pileated woodpecker – https://youtu.be/eqsYJDILrKU?si=a67h0VEGIZ2Af6L3. Tap tap tap! We can’t forget about the North Nest neighbors: the sounds and eventually sights of DN17 and DN18’s world! A female pileated woodpecker – see how her flame-red crest doesn’t touch her beak? – hammers her massive chisel of a bill deep into a dead limb. She taps, probes, and uses her long pointed tongue, barbs, and sticky saliva to catch and extract insects and insect larvae…especially ants!
A woodpecker’s tongue is truly bizarre and so long that it coils around the back of its owner’s skull. Birdnote tells us that Pileated Woodpeckers have a tongue up to five inches long! https://abcbirds.org/blog21/woodpecker-tongues/.
Decorah Geese
We are up to five eggs in N2B. We should have two leaps this year: One at N1 on or around April 13, and one at N2B on or around April 23rd!
March 25, 2024: A sixth egg for the geese at N2B
March 25, 2024: Egg #5 – https://youtu.be/aDRIV0wV27M?si=3epm0f3qwordOTM4. MG2 is beautifully bejeweled with rain as she lays her sixth egg at N2B (the first one missed her scrape and fell out of the tree). She might lay another – we’ll see tomorrow or Thursday! Either way, she’s in full incubation now. Male geese protect the nest but do not share in incubation duties, which means she’ll get very few chances to eat until her eggs hatch and the goslings jump. She will lose roughly 25-30% of her body weight during incubation.
By delaying incubation, geese delay the onset of embryonic development and assure the synchronous hatching of fertilized eggs. Synchronous (closely-timed) hatching is especially important in the case of Canada geese and similar birds, which leave the nest roughly 24 hours after hatching. Unhatched eggs or birds too young to follow their parents die.
March 26, 2024: Geese at N1. Hatch should start here about April 13.
March 25, 2024: Teamwork makes the dream work! https://youtu.be/LBcovaa2IzE?si=ExTf3zkufcitkGDd. Male geese don’t help incubate, but they do help defend their nests! We don’t know what was threatening them, since HD and HM haven’t visited N2B. But whatever it was, the two made their displeasure and defense very clear!
The Raptor Resource Project