After a relatively quiet, month long, incubation period, things recently hotted up at our live streamed Grey Heron nest. On Saturday 9th March two of the three eggs hatched. The third followed two days later. All three events were captured for posterity by our live stream.
However the drama did not end there. The third chick, born two days later than the other two, inevitably suffered an ongoing size disadvantage when competing for food and it seems this eventually put paid to him.
On 17th March, as the stream started at 6am, it could be seen that the smallest chick was not under the protection of the sitting adult, as he should have been and as were the other two, but was instead exposed on the near edge of the nest. He was still clearly alive at that time. However at 6.28, shortly after the female had fed the other two chicks but not him, she moved his body across and by now he was clearly dead. Four hours later, at 10.40, the male adult arrived …. and ate him!
It is disappointing and perhaps upsetting, but actually not all that surprising, to have lost one of our three chicks at this stage. In common with other species, part of the herons’ reproduction strategy is to advantage some chicks over others.
In this way, in good years, when food is abundant, a larger number of chicks can survive whilst in other years unequal distribution of food makes it more likely that at least some will do so. So for us, the loss of one of our chicks should at least now increase the survival chances of the other two.
As for the grisly disposal of his body, well that is also perhaps not what we wanted to see but it happens in other predatory species too, e.g. owls. Nothing is wasted in nature!
In YouTube click on the blue numbers to navigate to the right part of the footage
Note that you can view recordings of any of the incidents described in this article on our FoSL YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/@fosl01. Here you will find a full set of stream recordings since early February. Only on days when lack of solar power prevented the stream starting are dates missing. And within each daily recording all key events are indexed using YouTube chapters, making them easy to find.
So to view any of the events described, and much more, in YouTube first find the video corresponding to the date you wish to view. Then open up that video’s description field and look for a table of numbers in blue with descriptions. It will look a bit like the one pictured above. Then click on any blue number to navigate to the section of video described alongside.
All being well the two surviving chicks should steadily get bigger and stronger until around the end of April, when we would expect them to fledge. We will keep you posted but of course you can always follow their progress yourself on our livestream page or on our YouTube channel.