Tess is sitting on seven eggs, a lot for what looks like a relatively small space. Sometime around March 20 there should be a pip, followed by hatches over a two week period. Will all seven eggs hatch? How well will the younger ones will do given the speed at which they mature and the developmental differences between the oldest and the youngest? Will the Count be able to supply enough food?

Seven barn owlets would require a LOT of food being supplied for them to grow. When the youngest reaches about 2 weeks of age Tess will join the Count in hunting and supplying food. Still I can't imagine how much food it would take for that many.

The thing I worry about with Tess is the crowded space she has in that tree and how will the little ones keep from getting stepped on by the bigger ones. Two weeks age difference is huge in Barn Owl size and sometimes the youngest ones don’t survive. Because barn owl eggs hatch in the order they were laid, the older, stronger owls get a head start on the ones that are born later. This is how the strongest birds survive. However, barn owls are among the few birds whose young actually play together. Sometimes the older ones will actually stand and wait for the younger ones to eat first and their is no beak bonking or aggression going on between them like we see with the little eaglet siblings.
Owlets will stay in the nest box for about 49 – 54 days before they are ready to fly. Going to get real crowded in that tree before this is over. It's going to be very interesting to watch and see how it all works out.

Interesting article on spots.

What Male Owls Want: Big Spots

The most widely spread of any owl species, barn owls are found on every continent except Antarctica. They are solitary, or found in pairs. It turns out, female barn owls with larger spots up their sexy quotient, and have greater success in mating, according to a study published in 2010 in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society.
CREDIT: Dreamstime.

"What nice spots you have" could apparently be a barn owl pickup line. A new study found that female barn owls with larger spots seem to up their sexy quotient, and have greater success in mating.

Perplexingly, the same trait — large dark spots on the tips of the white feathers covering the owl's body — appears to hurt male barn owls' reproductive success. [Image of owl sporting spots]

In the new study, researchers followed barn owls over several molting periods and measured any changes in their successive coats. They found that adult females bred earlier in the season and laid larger eggs when their new coats became scattered with larger spots. In contrast, males with this trait fared less well.

"The key story is that there is sexually antagonistic selection — females are selected in one direction, and males in another direction," said Alexandre Roulin of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, co-author of the new study. An example of sexually antagonistic selection in humans, he said, is the hip bone. In females, larger hips are selected for because they aid in childbirth, while in males, larger hips are selected against because they hinder the ability to run fast.

However, for owls, it's less clear what adaptive function dark spots would have.

Whatever the reason, on female owls, larger spots definitely attract the boys. In a related study, the researchers found that when male barn owls were mated with females whose spots had been removed, they reduced their sperm investment, and chicks from such pairings didn't fare as well.

But why are spots so attractive on a female?

"My guess is that the size of the spots signals gene quality," Roulin told LiveScience.

The dark coloring of the spots is caused by the pigment melanin. Whatever gene or genes in barn owls that are responsible for the production of melanin may have other biological functions that are somehow beneficial in females, Roulin said. And this same gene may be somehow harmful in males.

But it's too early to know which genes may be involved, and to figure out why they have these puzzling effects.

"Now we would like to understand why we find this result, because it seems very strange — females with spots do better and males do less well," Roulin said. "My impression is we came to a system where there are really great things to discover."

Roulin and Lausanne colleague Amelie Dreiss reported their findings in the November 2010 issue of the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society.

Tess gave us a quick peek at one of her eggs. It looks like it's cracked but hard to say for sure without seeing it in a bigger screen.

Tess has shown different behavior today from what I could see. I know it's not confirmed, but I believe she has had a hatch. Lano and Pop thought they saw a pip yesterday and I thought I saw a crack in an egg today. She is getting up and lot and digging in her nest. She was also seen eating what Peg and Pop thought was egg shell. I took a couple of pics of what I believe was a crack in the egg and part of the shell. If today is the first hatch, which I estimated was the 1st day for hatch watch from the date of the 1st egg, then she should have another hatch every other day for the next 2 weeks. She'll have owlets in every size IF they all make it. Should be fun to watch!

Today you can clearly see an egg shell by the hole opening.

I saw the baby owlet moving around and saw it's little wings. She has at least one hatch and maybe another today that we can't see yet. She's gonna be busy and so is Count cause their grocery bill is about to increase BIG TIME!

We have #2 well on the way. All it needs is one more push and it's outta there!

awwwww it's a baby! Thanks Peg.

Weggs sent me a pic of the Count she got last night! Thanks Weggs!
Priscillash got a video of him out on the limb, too. Thanks Priscilla!
Nice to see all of him at last and he's a handsome guy!







I also got a snip of Tess and 1 of her babies last night.

Weggs shared this video of the Count with me. She says hello to everybody.
http://tinyurl.com/cgdhcfq

This is the first pic of Barney at EC taken by Lano on Jan. 26, 2012.

You can find it in the EC RRP forum here: http://www.raptorresource.org/forum/inde...1.html#msg83961

This was taken before Fred and Wilma Goosestone were ever thought about, too. Nobody recognized him then, but he's plain as day now.

We've really all learned so much haven't we! We've become accidental "Raptorologists." Who would have ever dreamed that?! I guess this sort of justifies watching these cams so much since it's not a complete waste of time, huh.