HbrgA! No such thing as overdoing it! Keep it coming.

Here's a video today from Priscillash.

Want to see that moment last night when Roly Poly's eyes got bigger than his belly?

Video from Dyfi Osprey Project:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=102...&type=2&theater

ROFLMBO!!! Thanks R4.

Today Glesni was chirping & the chicks were cheeping for a meal. Here they are awaiting Monty's food delivery. The older chick is a week old now, and quite a bit larger than his/her sibling.

This morning I watched as Monty fed the chicks. Glesni kept trying to get a bite, or either she wanted to take over the job. I looked in later in the day to find Glesni feeding one chick. The other chick went missing for about 13 minutes, and FB posters started getting antsy. No sooner had I posted my own "heads up" than the little one came waddling up, a little late but there was still plenty of fish left over.

UNREAL! I watched full screen, too. Thanks for sharing HbrgA.

Today I learned a new word! THANATOSIS : the act of feigning death.

Dyfi's post: Someone asked a question over the weekend... "how old are osprey chicks when Thanatosis kicks in?"

We got the answer on Sunday when the chicks were 9 and 7 days old - have a look at the video..

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=102...&type=2&theater

Ospreys have a very characteristic call for intruders around the nest, this communication tells the chicks to drop down pancake style into the nest and not move, basically 'playing dead'. They are too small to defend themselves from large predators (in the UK - crows, gulls, goshawks, herons etc) so their only form of defence is Thanatosis - it as a form of 'self-mimesis', a form of camouflage or mimicry in which the "mimic" imitates itself in a dead state.

In a few days we will see a white line forming down the spine of the chicks. To an aerial predator, this will look like a small stick and part of the nest itself making the still chicks look almost invisible. Very clever.

Priscillash videoed mom coming in and landing on the babies. Doesn't look like it hurt them, thankfully, and I think the one baby on the left slept thru the whole thing. LOL What is that big wad of stuff in the nest that mom is standing on?


Thanks Priscillash!