ESTLAT Estonian WTE Webcam 2013

[ame]

yesterday i happened to find something funny when i was looking up some feeding data. the evening of May 8th was warm and calm. at 19:18 Linda was feeding Junior and hundreds of mosquitos were dancing in the air between the trees behind the nest. they looked like tiny sparks going up and down and around in the air in the sunshine. when i was watching the video i suddenly realized that something else was dancing in the air right in front of the camera: a spider was weaving its web right under the nose!
i made some gifs of the spider dance. first it can be seen in the bottom of the picture "under" Linda's feet and it climbs up under Linda's tail...


then it moved to the right side of the nest and from there it climbed up to the left upper corner of the picture ....


and then started to come down from there on the left side to Linda's tail...

[ame]

at Linda's tail (actually in front of it) the spider changed its direction towards the centre of the bottom of the picture.


then it moved up and down in the lower part of the picture, drifting towards the lower right corner...


... and kept on moving there for some time.


here's the video clip of this event. first some bigger insect flies in front of the camera. there were voices of bees or wasps or just plain flies buzzing near the camera then, laranjeiras heard the voices.
i remember i was watching the moscquitos in the background and i totally missed the itsy-bitsy-spider....

[Gavril]

AME! Thank you for the fascinating story of the life of the spider! Another example of a useful coexistence. Life is so diverse!

[ame]

The ESTLAT Eagles Cross Borders project is now over. It was a joint project of the Latvian Fund for Nature and the Ornithological Society of Estonia, lasting over two years (2012- 2013). The aim of the project was to work for the protection of large raptors, especially white-tailed sea eagles and ospreys, in Estonia and Latvia.

Information and news updates about the project can be found here:
http://www.eoy.ee/en/taxonomy/term/91

A seminar to summarize the results of the project was organized on September 25th 2013 in Valga, Estonia:
http://www.eoy.ee/en/node/717

The presentations given in the seminar can be found here: http://www.eoy.ee/node/715 ,
and the picture album of the event is here:
https://plus.google.com/photos/10250360 ... banner=pwa

[ame]

i heard some news yesterday about this camera. it will be replaced with a new camera sometime this autumn. also other necessary repairs and replacements of faulty equipment will be made. then the Saunja camera will start working again but still it is not known when this will happen...

while we are waiting here's something i found in the Pontu archive.


the recording is from May 12th at 7:25.

[Riitta]

i heard some news yesterday ...

Hallo ame,
very good news, thanks for your information.

[Janne+Ais]

Thank you, ame, these are wonderful news!!!

[Manu]

Thank you Ame for the news (we are waiting patiently ) and this funny "poop shot" GIF and video of our little Illimar you found on archive .

[ame]

i have recently been filling in the gaps that i have in my records of the activities at the nest. i came across this Pontu picture of Linda taken on May 12th at 8:42. she had come home just a few minutes earlier and i had a video of her arrival, but this her funny hairdo was not on the video. clearly there was something interesting in the sky but what..?


then i checked from the Pontu archive videos what happened there and made a shorter recording of that. the video revealed two things which could not be seen in the Pontu pictures: firstly the interesting UFO which Linda was looking at was a grey heron (Ardea cinerea) who made a few shrieks when it flew over the nest. the first call is coming quite near the nest. secondly Sulev can be heard calling at the the heron, too, and not just Linda. Linda was making a lot of neck-twisting exercises when she was looking at the heron circling in the sky.
- the heron itself can't be seen on the video.


i also took some snapshots of the video. one of them drew my attention: Linda was looking more or less straight towards the camera with her left eye open and the right eye was covered with the so-called nictitating membrane (or plica semilunaris) which is a semitransparent second eyelid under the outer eyelid. also cats and dogs have these second eyelids. that is why in this picture Linda's right eye looks grey (as if it had cataract). the left eye is bright and the black pupil can be seen surrounded by the yellow iris.
so it seems that eagles (and probably other birds, too) can operated these "blinking eyelids" independent of each other!


all that is left of the nictitating membrane in our eyes is only a small crinkle in the inner corner of the eyes. it is also difficult or at least not simple for us to blink our eyelids separately. in these ways eagles are more developped than us.

i have a series of pictures Linda's eye, taken at the old nest in 17 Mar 2011 at 15:46 here
viewtopic.php?p=94672#p94672
there in the middle picture the nictitating membrane covers Linda's eye in the half way.

[ame]

we have known that Sulev is a skilled fisher but on May 13th he maybe broke his record, at least in speed of fishing. he started the day quite moderately though: he brought two rather small fish in the early morning (at 5:18 and 6:05) and one big fish (a carp probably) at 7:08, and then a small piece of fish at 13:03.

after that the weather turned cloudier and a rain seemed to be on the way. in Finland folklore says that fishing is good before rain. maybe Sulev knew this, too, as then he began to FISH.
(folklore also says that fishing is good after rain and even during rain... )

anyway, he left the nest and brought a big carp at 14:03:32 after being away from the nest for 4 min 51 s. he didn't stay long but set out to fetch another. he brought a rather big fish at 14:09:06 after being away for only 3 min 20s! then he rested a bit longer: he brought the next big fish (maybe a carp again) at 15:17:30 after being out for 7 min 2 s. the average time to fetch a fish was 5 minutes. it was as if he just went out around the corner to a shop.
i guess that this may be a reason why they moved to this nest: shorter fishing trips.

here are pictures of Sulev bringing these fish.

[ame]

while i was watching the Pontu-videos of these fish deliveries and feedings after them i noticed something that had slipped by without us noticing: one fish got away!
Linda was feeding Junior at 15:20 after the delivery of the third of Sulev's fast fish when something flashed between her legs.


here's a slowmotion video of this escape.


eagles seem to have the habit of eating the freshest fish first and the oldest last. Sulev also seems to tear up and eat the head off the fish after he comes home with a fish if he hasn't done that already before coming home. i gues this is to kill the fish and prevent it from escaping and he had done so with all the fish he had brought on that day. in the afternoon there was in the nest also an old piece which was brought there the day before, on May 12th. the last, 15:07-fish was totally consumed in one feeding. with so many fish delivered and eaten it took me some time to find out which one of them was the jumping fish.

so which fish was the flying fish? i came to the conclusion that it had to be the 14:09-fish. still 1 hour and 20 min after being brough to the nest and having its head eaten off (at least half of it) the fish was able to twist so that it slipped out.

Linda made an illusionist's trick after she had fed the 15:07 fish to Junior. when that fish was finished she walked from the back to front and happened to reveal the yesterday's fish from under some moss which was on the back-left. then she took the 14:09-fish from the right and put it down at her feet quite next to the older, yesterday' piece. after looking around a bit she took the yesterday's fish...
wips! out goes the fresher fish. Linda didn't even notice it but went on giving food to Junior from the oldest piece.

here's a longer version of how it happened (from Pontu archive).

[ame]

in the late afternoon there was a hard rain which made everybody quite wet. after 7 pm the rain stopped and around 8 pm it became sunny. at 19:11 Sulev brought one more fish. good fishing after rain, too.

[ame]

i also looked up when and how the egg dropped out of the nest. it happened quite like laranjeiras described it right after it happened.

the egg has just fallen off the edge of the nest! Sulev and Linda accidentally knocked it off and sulev looked over to see but it had gone... this happened 07.12
...
i wasn't fast enough to catch it but here is sulev taking off - Linda had arrived just a minute before

it was Sulev who accidentally kicked the eggshell out (it was only an empty shell any more then).
he looked down after the eggshell: "oops!"


after the fall Sulev jumped on the left branch and it seemed that he was still looking down to see where the egg had gone. - otherwise they hadn't cared a bit about the egg for a long time.
here's a video it the egg falling out. Linda came home just a bit earlier.

[AlteEule]

Thank You, Ame,
for these wonderful videos
I remember a lot of time visiting the nest.
It was a beautiful summer!

greetings from

AlteEule

[Gavril]

Thank you AME! Very interesting stories from the life of Sulev and Linda. Flying fish and egg... And touching and loving stunning parents Sulev and Linda. I can watch this forever!

[Mutikluti]

Good afternoon!

Look, whom I found from this webcam....




Our camera is working again....Linda, Sulev and Illimar were not at home...maybe somebody of them come to visit us?

THANK YOU, URMAS!

[Janne+Ais]

Yes, thank you!!!

[Mutikluti]

After 16.00 I heard some times an eagle call!

[ame]

yippee!

thank you Mutikluti for those pictures!

but now the camera is off again....
i missed it all........

[ame]

Pontu-camera is working in its normal address starting from 11:08
i replaced h with a star * here:
*ttp://pontu.eenet.ee/saunja/2013-11-06/2013-11-06-11-38.jpg

here's a familiar face at 11:44.


a final touch at 11:59


thank you Urmas (and helpers)!

the last picture was taken at 17:05.