 June
continued to spend most of her time inside the nest today, but did enjoy a
couple of short outings to take advantage of the warm spring day.
She is shown here in a pine tree near the nest box where she spent almost
half of her time looking back at the nest. She flew back to the nest after
about an hour, but remained in the doorway until Ward made his first
delivery of the night at 7:30pm. While it's not necessary to incubate the
egg at this point, there is a somewhat higher risk that the egg will be
taken by a climbing predator when June is out of the nest. Raccoons
especially enjoy feasting on owl eggs and are probably the greatest threat
in this area. This is the major reason that it is so important for humans
to stay away from the nest box during nesting seasons. Raccoons, fishers,
and other predators look for food where they smell the scent of humans. |
June spent
less than 3 of the first 24 hours inside the nest with her egg and Ward
seemed a bit disturbed by this behavior. He even broke his silence
around the nest by sitting on the rail and hooting into the nest box when
he arrived with prey and found the egg alone on the floor. On one
occasion, he continued with his monkey call until June returned to accept
the meal that he had delivered. Not until the second night, however, did
he arrive and find June in the nest to greet him with loud
squealing as he passed the prey through the door. This restored her
confidence in Ward to the extent that she was still there waiting for him
when he made his next delivery several hours later.