2005 Comments - Prothonotary Warbler, TX 1

I just checked the site and it looks like there is some activity there! Five eggs?

I see that one egg is out of the nest cup. Is that egg probably infertile?

I was surprised to see a female prothonotary with 5 eggs under her. Why wans't anything said about this second nest attempt?

Will there be a 2nd nesting this year ?

A great big Texas "YEHAW" for "Y'ALL" at Heard Museum.

Is this nestbox built over water and if so, how deep and how is it accessed?

The first picture at 8:00 CDT was an empty nest. The two remaining chicks must have fledged after 7pm when our system timer turns off the nest cam power. Sorry we missed it!

Loney Duncan

Tonight when I checked the Prothonotary Warblers, I only see two.

Our Heard computer people were working on our computer network around 2:30 CDT and I noticed that we were not refreshing the pictures for this web site.

Checking our nest cam video monitor, I noticed that the largest of the three chicks was very active and testing his wings. All indications were that he was about to fledge.

The computer folks finally got the network going by about 3:15. Returning home I checked this site at 3:43, and noticed that again we were not refreshing, with the last picture taken at 3:37. That picture showed only two chicks!

I returned to the Heard to double check the monitor ( sure enough, only two) and make sure the network was finally up and running, again!

So our largest chick left the nest the day Jennifer Maxwell from the Heard predicted Sunday. We may have the 2nd one fledge tomorrow. We're more uncertain about the smallest of the three.

Sorry to have had the computer interruptions at this critical time. I hope Cornell received some shots of the fledging between computer downs that can be shared.

Loney Duncan

There are only two nestlings in the box.Has the other one already fledged?

As you are aware, we had a radio link failure on our nest cam Tuesday, May 17. It took us most of Wednesday to pin point the trouble to the wireless receiver on our 40 foot amateur radio tower. We then contacted our wireless supplier who shipped us a replacement unit overnight. Even after replaceing the unit Thusday afternoon, we experienced other problems, and it wasn't until late Friday afternoon that we could transmit images again.

We are disappointed that the images we are presently transmitting are not of the quality that we had before the Tuesday failure. Apparently, the replacement unit is not giving us the radio link margin we had before. Our wireless supplier is sending us some other units early next week which we hope will restore the picture quality. In the meantime we'll make do with what we have.

As you can see, the three chicks have grown considerably since Tuesday. Yesterday, our volunteers at the Heard Museum banded the three, along with several others from the many Prothonotary nests we have in our wetlands. This next week ought to be interesting as our three chicks approach fledging. Hope you can monitor this. Thanks again for your patience.

Loney Duncan,
Heard technical volunteer.

Glad to see the camera up and running again.

I cannot believe those chicks will be leaving the nest so soon!!

Isn't 10-11 days a short nestling period for cavity nesting birds?

Is something wrong with the computer again - I can't get the Pro W image to refresh. Thank you for giving everyone the oportunity to see nesting behavior up close, and thanks for all the great info!

Interested in Illinois

After the appearance of the cowbird egg, there were still four PROW eggs in the nest. I don't see any chick which is much larger than the others, so I'm assuming that all three are PROW chicks (yay!). So if the mother rejected the cowbird egg, there still should have been four PROW eggs left, but there are only three chicks. If one was in fact infertile and removed by the parents, what a shame that wasn't the one that the cowbird originally ejected from the nest!

My kids and I have been watching this bird and I hope it is an educational experience for them. We named the mother bird Sunny and the babies The Three Musketeers!

Thanks to all who make this site possible.

Mom in Illinois

I think I see three chicks and the cowbird egg is still intact. Exciting!

Looks like two have hatched so far.

Just realized there are only four eggs and it looks like they are all the same size. Has cowbird egg been removed?

I'd get that cowbird egg out of there if that was my trail! Those warblers won't have a chance.

Jackie in OH

I am curious about how a bird "removes an egg". It seems as if it would be rather tricky.

I, too, was mystified by the missing egg, then saw five and erronesously concluded that I must have just missed seeing it.

This is fascinating!

I have a cam on a robin nest,and watched in disbelief the mother laying her first egg and immediately removed it.She subsequently layed 3 more eggs and is now incubating all 3 of them.I suppose that she knew that the first egg of the season was infertile and removed it.I think this must have happened in your case too,.Steven

Checking in early afternoon Saturday, we appear to be missing an egg. What happened? A predator? Or was an egg removed on purpose?

Just saw the male bring food to the female. These two birds are beautiful, thanks for making this possible.

KBH

Picture is great in the 2005 prothonatary archives.
Great job, KS & crew.

I'm not getting an image, what is wrong?
KBH