looduskalender.ee

 

Klaara arrives to the nest with a catch of a brown frog, but food certainly seems to be scarce. The hungry owlets fight for food …

 

The female bird decides who will survive among her offspring. That four owlets fledge from four eggs is not rare in a good mouse year, and we have seen 5-6 mice lying about on the nest bottom in earlier years. This year there was only one mouse when the eggs hatched, and the attentive forum observers have not seen any stored reserves … Hunger forces the female to give the weaker one, thus also less valuable in the propagation of the species, to the stronger and more vigorous chicks…

 

 

The smallest of the remaining owlets, who may have been only a day younger than the biggest ones, was not capable of fighting successfully for food with the larger ones. Of course sad to watch but without the webcam there would be much that we would not know about the life of birds.