looduskalender.ee

No Lady Mallard in the nest this afternoon,just beautiful birdsong, and with that Buzzard for neighbours that might be for the best. But it was an exciting morning, and nearly made me come to late for work
Have a nice evening everybody

Beans, a Buzzard is buteo buteo.
Ravens are quite different.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Buzzard

the camera has turned off for today: the last P-picture is taken at 20.51:
http://pontu.eenet.ee/kotkas/2011-04-27 ... -20-51.jpg

i've been thinking that this is an interesting chess game. Daisy-the Duck or Maisy-the Mallard has (?) laid her first egg as a test-ball: she wants to see if this place is safe. if the egg is still there tomorrow morning she'll continue and maybe she will actually be successfull. the buzzard however, is keeping an eye on the nest: it came to check the nest just seconds (or few minutes) later than the mallard left. it knew all the time that the mallard was there... it did not do anything else but had a look there. if it is clever it will continue so for the two following weeks, letting Daisy lay a full clutch and then it'll come and harvest the nest.... it'll be a nerve-wrecking month for us!

now the P-bucket is willing to co-operate with me. here's the picture i wanted to post in the morning, showing the blue stripe on the wing of the duck, identenfying Daisy as a mallard:


maybe we should call her Maisy?

those stripes on the wings of ducks with species-characteristic colours are called 'wing mirrors' in Finnish. my dictionary says it's just a 'mirror' in English. how is it in other languages?

good night! we have an exiting morning ahead of us!

Thanks, Jo

I'm not familiar with Buzzards, so I want to learn a little more about them.

Are these both Buzzards (Buteo buteo)?





This is a Common Raven (Corvus corax)

Beans, your third picture is very familiar as a raven No doubt. But I want a second opinion about the identity of the bird in the top picture, on the nest. The lighting is very different, but also the feathering of the legs looks different too.

Can anyone help us please?
Fireblade, it looks as though you took the screen cap that beans has used in her post. Can you help us?

Yes, the bird in the nest doesn't look like the bird posted in Wikipedia, if we can count on this website to be accurate. At first I thought it was a Common Raven, but I was wrong. The body types are different. The bird in Fireblade's picture looks like it has a raptor's beak, but we can't see its talons, to be 100% sure.

Here's an article in Wikipedia about Buzzards:

CLICK HERE

I'm always interested in new birds. I rely on Cornell Lab of Ornithology, where I can get complete information. But there are no Buzzards in North America, so no information about them here. I have a paid membership to Birds of North America (part of Cornell Lab of Ornithology) where I can obtain detailed information about birds I come across in the wild and in the wildlife hospitals.

Beans, I have put this on Expert Questions, so we can hope for an expert answer!
viewtopic.php?p=98336#p98336

Beans I think they Buzzards (buteo buteo) are quite similar to our Red Tailed Hawks (Buteo jamaicensis) [Rough legged hawk (Buteo lagopus)] -- the calls seem similar to me. And I think they both come in lighter and darker variants. (ARKive says Buzzards vary a lot in colour althought the top is darker than the bottom)

I basically stand by this although after a bit of web searching it appears these common names can get rather confusing.

Arkive is pretty good -- information and pictures but I think it focuses on the fauna of Britain
http://www.arkive.org/common-buzzard/buteo-buteo/

I think their ultimate goal is not just to focus on Britain, but so far it seems to focus on Britain.

what a day in eaglenest - a mallard in nest. Why not, it´s a year with surprices.

And also visit afterwards - like Fireblade I think that it´s a Buzzard. The size, shape and colour fits perfectly

This is an excellent forum for learning about many kinds of birds. Thanks to all for the information you have provided.

Apr 28th: Good morning!

Maisy/Daisy is back in the nest, looking invisible.
it sounds so 'summery', and it took a while before i figured out why: there's a willow warbler singing. that's new in the forest this spring.

a white or yellow butterfly flew by the nest.

http://pontu.eenet.ee/kotkas/2011-04-28 ... -05-36.jpg



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Pontu cam came on at 5:36 AM & Maisy Mallard was in residence!

I agree with you, Ame, that she was laying an egg yesterday withh all that tail pumping in one of your videos. After she stopped doing that is when she began pulling stuff down into the nest under her.

And now she seems to have laid another one. She is upended into the nest bowl like she is burying something again.



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Or, maybe she was just checking . . .

Edit, 7:13-- She is still in there, deep in the bowl, in shadow. . . . Well, I think she is there, it is hard to tell, she has such good camouflage.

The Duck is back in the nest this morning , that was a surprise for me. I hope she is doing ok, considering the neighbourhood. Have a nice day/ good night everybody

Maisy Mallard shifts around in nest, pulls covering material in towards her.

8:29

Of course both birds in first two photos are Buzzards (Buteo buteo). This species has very different plumage colors. There could be two subspecies in Europe- Buteo buteo buteo and Buteo buteo vulpinus and also there are pale and dark color morphs and many intermediate plumage variants. Sometimes even for experts it's not easy to identify this species.

i started watching at 8.48 again and today i did not see her doing the pumping movement with her tail (i was at the LSE nest )


Kitty: did you see her do that?

Maisy left at 9.05. before that she dug in the bottom of the nest and pulled twigs to cover whatever there may be.

More video of Maisy Mallard (I like that name best).

8:47