NUMBER TWO

A short blog to let you know that things on the nest are proceeding nicely and egg no 2 arrived at 1713 yesterday. There was further disturbance by a female intruder in the morning and early afternoon but she never got close enough to see a ring number. 565 intruded after the first egg was laid and, although we haven’t seen her in the intervening 3 days, I would expect it to have been her again yesterday.

Anyway, it wasn’t enough to stop Augusta and she very quickly stood up after laying and backed off the eggs to show Samson the latest arrival. He was less excited than 3 days ago but his quick circular flight from the nest perch to the nest was enough to show him a far more interesting sight; Augusta had left some of the large trout he’d brought in earlier and he quickly grabbed it and flew off again to consume it away from the nest.

I think she was rather assuming he was flying around to come in and take over incubating while she recovered from the discomfort of laying the egg, hence her standing up. She probably wasn’t best pleased to find that, not only had he not done so, but he had also stolen the remainder of the fish (I think Samson likes to live life on the edge)!

The third egg is due on Tue and I expect that will be the completion of the clutch. Occasionally, a female will lay 4 eggs but that is usually when nests have a guaranteed good supply of fish and, as regular readers will know, that has not been the case with this nest. Nevertheless, things are looking better so far this year as far as fish supplies are concerned, so fingers crossed that remains the case. We then will settle in for the long wait on incubation with hatching not due until the first two weeks of Jun.