EGG COUNTDOWN

Hi everyone. I hope you’ve all been enjoying the live views of the nest that are now available on YouTube (link at the bottom of this blog). The pair have been extremely lucky with the weather and you haven’t yet seen Augusta’s best “drowned rat” impersonation that we often get during incubation.

We have had one or two intrusions since the last blog. 724 was persistent for a couple of days but hasn’t been seen recently. It’s always nice to see other birds but they do endanger eggs and chicks with the agitated incubator trying to see it off without leaving the nest, potentially damaging both. 731 was seen earlier in the season and we await details of both intruders from the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation, although we do know that 731 is from the Tweed area.

At long last, we are approaching the opening of the possible hatching period and, after taking my shoes and socks off so that I can use my toes as well as my fingers to count, I reckon we’re looking at about 28th for the first egg to be due to hatch. As those of you who have followed me for a while know, things are often not as straight forward as we would wish, and last year no 2 egg did not hatch and we were unable to work out why. So your fingers need to be tightly crossed that everything works out in the birds’ favour this year.

I’m going to be playing around with the camera a bit, seeing how far I can zoom it without losing too much clarity so please bear with me if you tune in and it looks a little wild on the screen. If we can get a decent picture where you can see what’s going on with the eggs, it might be that I leave it on zoomed during the hatching time but we’ll see how it goes. The other thing to work out is to see if I can use the zoom facility from home, or whether I have to be on site. If I can’t, much though I appreciate your support, I won’t be taking a sleeping bag down there and you may have to be a little patient before you get your first close-up look at eggs/chicks in the morning. I will also be expanding the coverage to start at 0500 local time, as long as the battery and solar panel can cope.

So, exciting times are close at hand. If you see a hatching, please make a note of the time (chick fully out of shell) and then post it as a comment at the end of this blog which I will then pick up; that will be a great help. A time for a first feed would be useful too.

YouTube feed:

https://www.youtube.com/live/qMthaNwbUd4?si=0ZbfeqMilhlWpsj2