My first task in the morning is to check my Tawny cam to make sure my tawny female is still there… and then to check the night-time footage to see if she has been fed by the male. Just about half way through incubation, she is reliant on the male to feed her. She does leave the box for about ten minutes each night, to stretch her wings and relieve herself I would imagine. She might also find somewhere to bathe and drink. She returns pretty quickly to settle, once again, on her precious single egg.
Last night, the male arrived and, once again, he had a large frog! Last time, the female took this rather large prey out of the box to consume. This time, she chose to eat it in the box… it was quite a struggle and I am surprised she managed to swallow that whole!
The question is, where is the male catching these frogs? There are several options. I have a relatively small pond in my garden, which is a short flight from the nest box. This weekend, I photographed the few frogs that were in there ….
Today, I was pleased to see several clumps of frogspawn…
… but no frogs…. could my tawnies be raiding my pond?
Last year, I saw no frogs in my pond for the first time in as many years as I can remember. Maybe the tawnies have something to do with this? I have set a Bushnell there to monitor and see if the tawnies are visiting. My neighbour also has quite a large pond and the bridle path and fields around here are pretty damp with long grass, so there is a possibility they are catching them there. It will be interesting to see if I capture any footage from the Bushnell at my pond!
After much fiddling with cabling and video servers, I finally have my Tawny cam live on my website. It will be nice to share my views of this tawny and, hopefully, she will have a chick in a couple of weeks! You can watch her… and hear her, on the front page of my website. You can still access my feeder cams by clicking on my Live Cameras section. I hope you enjoy watching this story unfold.