Looduskalender

What a surprise. It was an adult, probably mother. At 20:06 she is leaving.
Of course it is possible that we missed something and even that the archive missed something.

That was silent walking through. I can't tell who it was.

Summerkid, thank you for video:-) It's great to see bittern again. This short visit in the nest place gives us a little hope, that maybe we have a chance to see one or both juveniles. Of course a chance is very little. I would like to see to see how they look now.

Hagnat wrote:What a surprise. It was an adult, probably mother. At 20:06 she is leaving.
Of course it is possible that we missed something and even that the archive missed something.

I also think, that probably there were missed moments with bitterns somewhere close to the nest. We can't watch all time. Sometimes we can be late only few seconds, and miss a moment. On 06.26 I took a glance on the nest at 12:06 and saw something similar to bittern disappearing in the reeds. I even wasn't sure, that it was bittern. Now I know, that it was. It was only a minute too late :( So it can be, that we missed few short moments. Juveniles, if they are doing well, will fledge soon. Then probably we'll have even less chances to see them, then now.

18:48 nest time. Something is in the nest. but I can't understand what. Some sleeping black bird? Or grass snake? Even through my glasses I can't recognize, must wait until this "thing" will move. My guess, that it is grass-snake. Can it be?

Yes, it seems to be a snake

It came at 17:31

My 1st screen shot is at 18:00. When I returned from work and started to watch, snake was already there . Good place to rest. :-)

She left the nest around 20:20

Ouffff ... it took hours now to download the video patch with arrival of the snake
When she left I had my own recording on

She came at 17:31 and her head appears above the word "dabasdati" in the time stamp

Thank you for videos, Bea. Now we can see the beginning and the end of snake visit in the nest. Bitterns left the nest, but something is happening there probably every day, we only have to be there in right time. :)

In dabasdati forum NoraR writed that today in the afternoon the camera will be removed from the bittern nest!!! :(
We can hope watching the bitterns next year.

summerkid wrote:In dabasdati forum NoraR writed that today in the afternoon the camera will be removed from the bittern nest!!! :(
We can hope watching the bitterns next year.

Probably is no more sense to keep camera working, but I am a bit sad. I like those sounds, like to wait for lucky chance to see Bitterns one more time. But in any case we had wonderful time here, got a lot of knowledge about Bitterns. Hope, next year we'll have great chance to observe bitterns again.

Hi!

Hagnat wrote: I haven't seen it directly but most likely it is European Reed Warbler.

Thank you, Hagnat, you must be right

The cam is off, this is my last picture of the marsh

This cam attracted almost 200.000 unique views.
https://translate.google.com/translate? ... onus-reizu

Bea wrote:Ouffff ... it took hours now to download the video patch with arrival of the snake
When she left I had my own recording on :wink

She came at 17:31 and her head appears above the word "dabasdati" in the time stamp

i'm a bit late commenting here about the snake. if this snake were seen at our summerhouse i would be 100%-certain that it was a grass snake (Natrix natrix). as this bittern's nest is located in Latvia i'm only 95%-certain that it was a grass snake.
we see these grass snakes at our summerhouse almost every summer. we once saw one grass snake swimming away from our 'beach' when we went into water. it was only about 3 m away from us. beautiful animal.

grass snakes are quite harmless nonvenomous shakes. in the old times some grass snakes used to live in cow-barns and people liked them because they ate mice in the barn. in nature they mainly eat amphibians (frogs and such). they also like the warmth of compost piles and lay their eggs in them. the bittern's nest was one such mini-compost in the middle of the field of reed, a nice warm place to lie on.

our grass snakes are almost solid dark/black, and they have two big white, yellow or orange spots in the back of their heads, just like the snake who enjoyed a sunny rest in the bittern's nest.
i borrowed this picture from the Finnish Wikipedia:

https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rantak%C3%A4%C3%A4rme
i don't know why the grass snake on the English Wikipedia page looks quite different. it must be some other subspecies or colour-variant.

for the misfortune of grass snakes a black colour-variant of the viper is also solid black but without the yellow spots. people are so afraid of snakes in general and of vipers especially so that they kill every snake they can get their hands on (with some tool of course) without taking a second to see if the snake has the spots or not. this happens still despite of that also vipers are protected animals in Finland, too, not only grass snakes.

The Wikipedia picture comes from the Ukraine and is therefore probably subspecies Natrix natrix persa. In North and North-Eeast Europe lives the nominate Natrix natrix natrix.

Video with summary of Latvian Bittern season 2015, by Latvijas Dabas fonds

[youtube]kd16Kgke6uU#t=46[/youtube]

Bea, thank you for posting this wonderful video. And one more time great thanks for everyone, who gave us a chance to see life of those so secret birds. I have hope, that we'll be able to observe Great Bittern this season too. But even not, last season gave us much knowledge about them. All things, that I saw here, all comments in forum, helped me first time to see Great Bittern in real life. I never thought before, that it is possible for me. So THANK YOU ALL! Best wishes from Lithuania!

Marfo,camera - Botaurus stellaris
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmBS8KJtG6k
We are looking at this year/google translate/
https://translate.google.lv/translate?s ... t=&act=url