Merganser video & East nest again

Bad streaming this morning: The streaming was not good for the hooded merganser’s jump from the nest box today. Some kind of network slowdown caused the live video to frequently freeze and stutter and the cameras were very much out of sync: e.g. one of them 30 seconds behind the other. (Of course a while after the mergansers jumped all three cameras were running smoothly with only one second of time difference.) I made a video of this morning’s event to compensate, see below.

There is a wood duck laying in the East nest box! As of this evening she has 3 eggs. I’ve turned on the East nest box camera again. Events there are a bit strange. She heavily feathered the nest for a week without adding any eggs at all. Normally the feathers go in after laying is done. For a while I thought she had nesting instinct with no eggs. We’ve seen that before and typically the duck gives up after a week or so of incubating nothing. It is not clear what will happen in the East nest, but I hope there will be another round of ducklings there. We’ve had 7 instances in the past where a nest box was used twice. There’s a summary for each nest box on the main birdsgv.com page

Two mergansers! Two little hooded merganser ducklings followed their mother out into the wild this morning. Their video is 3 1/2 minutes long.

I expected that all 9 eggs would hatch since they were all in the nest when incubation started, but there were 7 unhatched and un-pipped eggs. I candled the seven and all had developed; that is, they were not infertile. But there were no signs of life. I don’t know why.

2 thoughts on “Merganser video & East nest again”

  1. Thank you, Paul. These posts are a real highlight of Spring for me. I love sharing them with my grandkids – not sure who enjoys them the most, the kids or me!

  2. I’d been watching since early on and ready for the jump day.. and was sad to miss it. I was happy and surprised to see you posted a video. Those Merganser chicks were so adorable and seemed strong and ready within hours of hatching. Nature amazes me. Thank you for the video! and thank you for all of the work you put in to this site. It is much appreciated. I’m excited that there is a a new adventure to watch in the East nest box .

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *