Yesterday, the Immortal-So-Far Mr Bugg and I went back down to the lake to see what was going on, which was, “Not a lot.” We got a handful of photos, and spotted four different bald eagles though in pre-sunrise conditions, so far too dark to be worthwhile in the slightest. However, there was one particular discovery that bears highlighting here. Maybe. I don’t know – are you even reading?
The lake level was way down, probably the farthest that I’ve seen it, and as we approached the tree that housed the productive woodpecker nest last year, I was sharp-eyed enough to notice that it looked a little different.
That may not be enough, by itself, to illustrate what I mean, though the shattered drunk in the foreground might give a clue. But here it is from last year while the nest was active:
Taken from the opposite side, of course, but the difference should be obvious. The nest opening was between the two distinct branches extending to the right out over the water, and it appears to be just below those that the break occurred. It was inevitable, and while it did not seem to be occupied at any time this year, I’m still glad that this happened in the fall when it wasn’t likely to be in use.
I did, of course, start examining the shattered fallen portion of the trunk to see if I could find the nest hollow. After a bit of back-and-forth, looking for those side branches which had broken off, I picked a section and rolled it over, and there it was:
The debris in the ‘floor’ of the hollow was fairly indicative, but the couple of grey downy feathers still adhering to the wood confirmed things well enough to me. The bark had been long gone for years, but the impact broke away most of the underlying ‘outer’ wood as well. Still, from top center extending out to top right is the root of an old, smaller branch, which is visible as a stump in most of last year’s photos, such as this one:
From this, you can tell that the nest opening was about even with that stump, making it roughly 25cm deep.
I couldn’t let it go at that, because today is Expend Way Too Much Effort On a Pointless Project Day, which I do have to admit that I celebrate far more frequently than just on October 29th – at least once a month, but probably more than that, and someday I’ll try to calculate how often this is, in the spirit of true dedication. In recognition, I took a few of yesterday’s photos of the ‘outer’ wood that had broken away from the base of that branch stump, and compared it to several of the photos that I obtained last year to try and confirm that I had exactly the right hollow. That this makes no difference to anyone is exactly the point, which I suppose makes this not entirely a pointless project and so I’m kinda shitting on the holiday – don’t tell anyone, I’ll get branded a traitor or something. I never could confirm this (matching the wood, I mean,) but there are some markings that give a lot of weight to being correct; the wood around the nest opening had broken away someplace else, and I hadn’t looked for it because I had forgotten the holiday was today. But there were still plenty of fresher, paler scratches on the section I had examined to show that something had been clawing at it fairly recently, courtesy of all the parental activity at the opening, which is one method to identify an active nest. This is vaguely visible under the fledgling in the image above.
More photos – just a handful – will be along shortly.