It’s official: the Memorial Day Nor’Easter is now a fearful tradition in Plover Park. We’ve just had too many of these frigid, out of the northeast, overly windy-and-rainy Memorial Day weekends since the park opened. They could not come at a worse time for the birds. Most of the top 10 traumatic events in the park occurred over this holiday weekend as a direct or indirect result of the unfortunate weather pattern that now seems synonymous with the holiday weekend. I won’t recount them here.
On camera this morning, I can see that most of the birds are soaked and miserable, but hanging in there. The young pair Fee and Milly Grace might have given up already though; they’ve been off the nest all night, probably seeking shelter. Maybe they just don’t get this whole incubation thing yet, and the sacrifices it entails. We’ll just have to see if they return when things calm down.
The good news is that Marty Bird & Pedro Pascal, who were due to hatch last Wednesday, still haven’t hatched. While it’s rare for me to root for a nest not to hatch, if they can kick this can down the road just one more day, their chicks will have a much better chance at survival, and so will Marty & Pedro!
I had to look something up in the archive for Marty and stumbled on these photos from their hatch last year. I’ve been experimenting with nest cameras for several years, including fashioning my own camera lenses and diopters for the unique requirements of monitoring these tiny eggs and their massive predators.
These photos are from a failed experiment. At the time, I didn’t see anything of value. Almost all of the photos were either too blurry, totally white, or just blotchy and unreliable. I moved onto other experiments.
But on second look a year later, I found a few photos from that camera I want to share. They have a strange coloring and a strange, blurry focus, but I kind of like them!
Maybe I’m just responding to them because they have a soft warmth, reminding me what Marty & Pedro’s hatch could be if they just hang in there a little longer!
Say something kind