Sonchik wrote: January 1st, 2019, 9:03 am
As far as I can judge, the season of 2018 was unusual to nests with cameras.
1. The young couple of the first year of nesting which beat off a ready nest.
2. Vilnis dropped out of a nest and they with Robis lived on a meadow.
3. Vilnis from subordinated became the main thing.
4. Despite hunger both baby birds survived.
5. The nest absolutely collapsed, but gradually.
6. Eagles early began to build a new nest and constructed it long before the beginning of a new season.
Let's look what will be a new season.
i think you are right about 1, 4, 5 and 6.
number 6 is not so exceptional after all. eagles start rebuilding already in the autunm. that is their habit.
about 3: people tend to take on detail above everything else. Vilnis was the underdog this year and he became the most important thing. in 2015 Durbe didn't return to the nest after ringing (made only a brief stop a few times but didn't stay). that became the main concern of many people. they didn't see that at at phase parents don't stay all the time on the nest with the eaglets any more. this year no-one thought about that.
i think it is only (humanly) natural to focus on one detail. what the detail is will be chosen rather randomly.
about 2 i think you are mistaken but that is because you have been following these nests for a short time (or since when have you watched eagles?).
in 2010 at the Estonian nest one of the eaglets, Timmu made once so excited wing exercises on a branch that he failed to land on the branch. he fell down. Renno (the local eagle man in Saunja) went to look for Timmu in the same evening and found Timmu sitting in a nearby tree. he was undamaged so Renno left him there. Timmu climbed and crawled back to the nest during the following days.
in 2016 at the Estonian nest two out of three eaglets dropped out of the nest which was disintegrating under them. (or did they all drop out?) all started living as branchlings in the nearby tree. parents fed them around the forest. (branchling = an eaglet living and climbing in trees and jumping or flying short distances from branch to branch).
last year on the second Latvian nest one of the eaglets, Knips dropped out of the nest. he was a bit too young to fledge and had suffered from hunger so long that Janis Kuze went to take him to a bird sanctuary. Janis told us that Knips was only feathers, bones and skin (or something in that way). it was necessary to take him out of there.
also last year at the Estonian nest Sulvi dropped out of the nest which was disintegrating under her. she was old enough to survive without human intervention.
these are the examples that i can remember. out of 14 eaglets that i know (Sulli & Kluti, Teele & Timmu, Makonite & Pukitis, Durbertina, Nord & Rahu & Taibu, Knips and his sister, Robis & Vilnis)
4 or 5 had dropped out of the nest. (about Illimar we don't know; the camera broke too early but we know that he survived.)
that means that about one third of the eaglets have dropped out of the nest (29 % - 36 %). without human interference one of them would have died (but
perhaps the parents had been able to feed him in better fishing circumstances).
based on this statistics it is not very rare that eaglets drop out of the nest. last summer i asked a few eagle men how often they have found remains of dead eaglets under the nest when they have went to ring eaglets. they knew a few cases so it is not very rare. they also told me that on the ground an eaglet without ability to fly is a relatively easy catch for ground based predators like foxes. i didn't want to write about this in the forum because people were so anxious about the eaglets even without that information in that bad food situation.