Down To One - 04/09/2009

I left work Thursday around 3:00 p.m. and headed over to LEMP to check out the owl's nest. My friend Jerry mentioned that when he was there Wednesday after work mom was in the nest but he didn't see any babies. As of the previous Saturday there were two in the nest and a parent was close by. When I got there Thursday there was only one baby in the nest and a parent was on a close by tree. The sun was hot beating against the nest and the baby was really panting. The parent flew toward the nest around 5:30 only to land on a branch behind the nest instead of in it, about ten minutes later it flew back to the branch it came from. Since I didn't see any chance of the parent flying into the nest I called it a day.

Wondering how the baby was doing I headed out to LEMP Friday around noon - baby was still in the nest but there was no parent around - by the time I left around three and no parent in sight I couldn't help but wonder if this little guy was abandoned. I really hope not.

Since I learned of the nest(s) and especially with the birth of the babies I have seen people go to extremes to try and get photographs - alot of them trying to get through all of the dried branches and reeds just to get close enough to get a picture without any concern about the nestlings and the parents. Last Saturday one of the parents was sitting in a tree across from her babies a man trying to get "that" photo climbed down from the overlook and tried to make his way along the stream through the dried grasses to get his photo only to find out it couldn't be done. In this effort all he did manage to do was chase mom to another tree farther away from her babies and got no photo.

There are times when going after "that" photo is a good thing and then there are those times when you simply need to be patient and wait for it to happen.

Til my next post.