Osprey Tales

“Hello Tweedy. Good morning Harriett. Hello Ozzie”, the Doctor perfunctorily addresses us this morning, as if saying good morning to his office staff in a half awake sleep-fog.

“I really don’t like this tone of telepathy”, thought Harriett.

“Aren’t you being a little hard on him”, came back the Doctor’s Guardian Angel.

My good friend, the Doctor continued, “What’s going on up there”?

The Doctor’s pantomimed sincerity made me think of Mr. Obama’s show of confidence in his foreign policy.

Harriett threw up.

“It’s been 33 days”……..the Doctor casually remarked.

His sarcastic inference was so obvious, I had to wonder about his sixth sense.

“He thinks he knows so much”, Harriett continued her thought process.

The Doctor continued with his unintentional stupidity.

“My books say…………………….”

Stop!

The Doctor wants to cover the development of osprey chicks from birth to adolescence, growth, maturation, leaving the nest, flying and fending for themselves.

He realizes the task may be too much for him, so forgive him for any statements he makes that I may have to correct later.

Be compassionate and/or empathetic, what ever may be your case.

 
But wait! This may be one of those rare times when the Doctor magnificently raises to the occasion. Like the time he built the nest platform for us, or back in 2012 when he helped me get home after that horrible experience in Havana, or when he rescued Ozzie from a sure death at sea last year. Let us wait and see.

Harriett

The Doctor is ecstatic. He has been asked to talk to Mrs. Asbell’s kindergarten class about us.

“Osprey Day” they call it, and the Doctor is a special guest.

I coached him to think like a kid, be like a kid, and by all means make it interesting for a kid.

“I will”, promised my significant other and best friend.

Harriett sent the Doctor off with love and warmth in her heart

The classroom was chaotic and full of excitement. A respectful hush floated across the room as the Doctor entered.

“Boys and Girls this is……” Mrs. Asbell began, but no introduction was necessary.

“How old is Tweedy? Do you like her name? When will she fly? Does she like fish? Does Harriett snuggle with her? Can she read yet? What color are Tweedy’s eyes?”

“What color are Tweedy’s eyes?”

The Doctor thought about this for a moment.

“What color are Tweedy’s eyes”? Rhetorically, he repeated the question to himself out loud.

He was not sure how to answer this question and paused for a moment to collect his thoughts.

“What color are your eyes”? The Doctor began.

“Blue, green, brown”, rebounded a chorus of responses.

“And what color do you think Tweedy’s eyes are”? The doctor continued with confidence.

“Blue, green, red, purple, yellow, orange, black, brown, pink, magenta!”

Did a five year old human just say “magenta”? He thought to himself.

“Well…..continued the Doctor, eye color in the osprey is a very interesting subject”.

The children hung on every word.

Elated and emboldened the Doctor began as he slipped into a semi-hypnoptic state.

“Eye color is a polygenic phenotypic character determined by two distinct factors: the pigmentation of the eye’s iris and the frequency-dependence of the scattering of light by the turbid medium in the stroma of the iris”.

“What”? Said little Jimmy.

“The brightly colored eyes of many bird species result from the presence of other pigments, such as pteridines, purines, and carotenoids”, continured the Doctor happily.

Little Jeanie saw a cardinal out the classroom window. She pointed it out to Jimmy.

“Humans and other animals have many phenotypic variations in eye color. The genetics of eye color are complicated, and color is determined by multiple genes. So far, as many as 15 genes have been associated with eye color inheritance”, continued my oblivious soul mate.

Dumbfounded and disappointed the children stared at the Doctor in disbelief.

My man drooled on……….

“Some of the eye-color genes include OCA2 and HERC2. The once-held view that blue eye color is a simple recessive trait has been shown to be incorrect. The genetics of eye color are so complex that almost any parent-child combination of eye colors can occur. However, OCA2 gene polymorphism, close to proximal 5′ regulatory region, explains most human eye-color variation”.

“This is boring”! Cried out a pretty little girl named Molly. “Really, really boring”.

Mrs. Asbell looked distraught.

I tried frantically to get through to him, but he was so self-absorbed in his new role as Kindergarten teacher he would not respond.

Finally Mrs. Asbell announced, “bathroom break”.

A flurry of activity erupted and suddenly the classroom was quiet.

Mrs. Asbell did not know what to say, but just then I got through to him.

What the #$%! Are you doing!

(Sometimes you have to be very frank with the Doctor).
Hey, look osprey dignity is at stake here.

“What do you mean”? Asked the Doctor incredulously.

“Think like a child! Talk like a child! Act like a child! You dumb #*%*!”!

The Doctor’s attention had been caught.

“Wow, I’ve never felt Harriett so upset. Maybe I should turn down the sensitivity on my telepathy”.

Bathroom break was over.

“Where is the Doctor?” A convergence of thought created by the children inquired.

Nowhere is he to be seen.

Mrs. Asbell zipped up little Mark’s pants. At least he did not need to be wiped anymore, and kidergarten continued as though there had been no disruption. Little Molly was about to discuss various Princesses from the 13th century when the Doctor reentered the classrom dressed like this:

It was the best he could do impromptu.

“Now let’s get serious”, said he.

In many birds of prey, the eye color changes as the bird matures and can serve as a means of determining an individual’s age. Adult ospreys have brilliant yellow eyes, but they are not born with this color eye. The osprey’s eye color changes from blood red in nestlings to orange-yellow in juveniles to yellow in adults.

Ospreys, when they hatch, have dark blue eyes. After a few days, the eye color starts to change to a deep reddish-orange color and they then remain like this for their migration to South America. When ospreys return north to breed at the age of two or three however, the eyes are suddenly a bright yellow color!

Now for your test:

I will show you pictures of an osprey. You tell me if it is a baby or a teenager or an adult.

Ready?  OK.

Number 1

Number 2

Number 3

End of test

Here I am feeding Tweedy. Look at the nice bracelets the Doctor has given me.

There was a powerful flapping sound from out side the school house window. The children ran for cover.

Look what just flew in the window!

The Doctor awoke with a start.

This whole episode has been a dream. Everyone knows school is out for the summer.

Whew! “Thought the Doctor.  No embarrassment to carry”.

But……….
 
“Did I really give Harriett a bracelet?  I hope she doesn’t read anything into it”.

Amen

It’s been four weeks since you were born.  The Heavens seem happy. All is well.

I’m not just bragging because Tweedy is my daughter, but Tweedy is growing much faster and is a lot more mature that Riki was at 4 weeks of age last year.

Just look at her!  Tweedy is so very active, so much so that Ozzie has had to build the borders of the nest higher.  She looks around in anticipation of Ozzies’ arrival with food.  Tweedy is stretching her wings, beginning to show feathers and practically grabbing food from me when it arrives.

My Tweedy is one heck of an Osprey!

Proud Mom,

Harriett

Chinese hamster

The Chinese hamster (Cricetulus griseus), is a species of hamster originating from the deserts of northern China and Mongolia.

It is unique only in that it is the only natural predator of the gremlin. The life span of a gremlin, on average is 100 years. Chinese hamsters live two to three years on average.

The Chinese hamster kills a gremlin with its midnight black, death delivering eyes. Once the two make eye contact, their vision and minds lock into an inescapable death grip. Once transfixed, the gremlin has no chance; it cannot look away. Much the way a bulldog wins its fights by tenaciously clamping its jaws on its adversary’s neck ands never letting go.

The mechanism of action is not fully understood, but the prevailing theory is this:

The reflection of the gremlins malicious deeds in totality, compacted and focused into a single thought wave, is returned from the hamster’s pearly black eyes and produces an unresolvable moral and/or ethical dichotomy that cannot be reconciled. The gremlin’s relatively advanced cerebral cortex cannot process this conflict, becomes confused, disoriented and its memory begins to be rapidly erased.

In a desperate attempt to save itself, the gremlin’s brain passes the conflict to the temporal lobes only to cause deafness, blindness and an inability to vocalize. Sometimes there is a brief seizure before the problem is pass onto the brainstem where breathing stops and there is no support for BP or cardiac function.

The entire process takes 5 to 8 minutes.

This uniqueness of the Chinese hamster is known only to a few select scientist. All of whom live in the West.

I can tell you no more. The rest is classified as Top Secret. I will however let you know what the Doctor is up to, if I can count on your discretion.

Trustfully,
Harriett

“Bad news for the Doctor”, said Harriet. “He will not be happy”.

“The Doctor was sure Mike the Gremlin worked alone”. But look what Cleo just dragged into the yard.

A Baby Gremlin

“&#%!@? $#&^@! ?*^#$@ !$%#*! ……….. !”

“I had to step back, it shocked me so. I never suspected the Doctor could swear like this:

Darn! Confound it! Sugar! Jiminy Cricket! Doggone it! Golly! Gee whiz! Heck! Dang nabbit!

On behalf of my very best friend, I want to apologize to all of you for his poor judgment, heinous vulgarity, as well for his bad taste, foul mouth and inexcusable, ungentlemanly behavior. Never before have I heard such filth come from his beakless mouth. I’ll leave a bar of soap in his big nest tonight; he’ll know what to do with it.

In Summary:

1. I denounce the Doctor’s vulgarity in the strongest terms. OK, I’ll say it. “Foowy”!

2. The second gremlin complicates the Doctor’s plan. The Plan must be changed, making the entire operation more complicated. We will probably need some Cricetulus griseus (rare Chinese hamsters).

3. We need Chi Ho Chung.

Anxiously,
…………………………………………………..Harriett

“The Doctor has tired of the Gremlin.  It will not interact with him and makes no effort to communicate; not even eye contact.  Marley is afraid of the Gremlin and the Doctor’s bi-monthly nest cleaner will not clean the Doctor’s office any more. Even Angela seems to imperceptivity turn away from the Gremlin’s cage.

Taxidermy by Norman Bates

Here are a few facts I learned about the Gremlin by way of Marley’s mind.

The Gremlin’s real name is Mike.  He has used Rocky, Mr. Imp and Adolf as aliases over the past 90 years. It is male, has never known a female Gremlin, and is afraid of hamsters.  He likes to work alone and is especially talented in mechanical disruption.  Until the digital age he thought his work in aircraft malfunction was his crowning achievement.  He won several awards for his activities during World War II.  But the advent of computers, the internet and digital data transfer has given him a new calling.  Mike has embraced it with enthusiasm.  What a windfall.  Disrupting electronic data processing is so easy for Mike. He rejoioced, “Easy Street, now and forever”!

That was of course, until Marley and Cleo caught him.

 
Two very proud dogs

Sorry to be so late. The Doctor forgot to leave the window open in his big nest, so I could not get to his computer this afternoon. Has anyone else noticed the Doctor being more forgetful lately? Oh well, forget about the Doctor’s forgetfulness for now.

Happily we are having a joyful telepathic jousting over dependability, reliability and responsibility. The Doctor debates well on these subjects.

A promise is a promise. Our ten day old baby osprey now has a name.
It is …………………………

Wait, before I tell you, I need to explain that it was Ozzie who made the final decision.

Confidentially, I favored “Storm” or “Stormy”. The Doctor liked “Skye” and “Zeus”. If anyone doubts that Zeus can be feminine, just take a look at the Doctor’s bridge teacher “Zeus”.

The Doctor’s Bridge Teacher

The human female that lives in the big nest with the Doctor wanted “Gale or Gayle”. Ozzie rejected them instantly.

“Sunny or Sonny” received more consideration but was forgotten immediately when Mrs. Mary Asbell’s kindergartner class submitted their suggestions.

As soon as Ozzie heard the name “Tweedy” he was fixated. No further discussion was possible. Ozzie put his Talons down and that was it.

I am glad too. I like the name “Tweedy”.

Congratulations to Mrs. Asbell’s Kindergarten class. They have named the bird.

Which animals, in all of the animal kingdom, have the best eyesight? You guessed it!
Birds of Prey (Raptors).

Falcon

Eagle

Hawk

Owl

Vulture

Osprey

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The Greatest Fisherman

And who is the best fisherman in all the animal kingdom? I know you know.
The Osprey!

 
The osprey is the greatest fisherman on planet earth

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Raptor Eyes

The visual accuity of raptors is legendary. The keenness of their eyesight is due to a variety of factors; raptors have large eyes for their size, and the eye is tube-shaped to produce a larger retinal image. The retina has a large number of receptors per square millimeter, which determines the degree of visual acuity. The more receptors an animal has, the higher its ability to distinguish individual objects at a distance, especially when, as in raptors, each receptor is attached to a single ganglion. Raptors have foveas with far more rods and cones than the human fovea. This provides them with spectacular long distance vision. In general raptors have distance vision 6 to 8 times better than humans.

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Forward Facing Eyes

The forward-facing eyes of raptors provide binocular vision, which is assisted by a double fovea. The raptor’s adaptations for optimum visual resolution has a disadvantage in that its vision is poor in low light level.

Forward facing eyes
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The Osprey Stare

The arrangement of the feathers above the osprey’s eyes serves to reduce glare from the water surface when the bird is hunting for its staple diet of fish. It also gives the osprey its distinctive stare.

The Doctor has more, much more to tell you about our eyes and our incredible eyesight. It does not seem all that ammazing when you have it from birth, but I can “see” how those of you less fortunate could be envious.

Until next time,

Harriett

Harriett returns to her nest. Carefully she straddles her eggs; arranges them, wriggles to get them below her brood patch, and contentedly huddles down.

The Doctor enjoys the soft, incoming, telepathic waves of happiness.

Broodiness In wild birds

Broodiness is the behavioral tendency to sit on a clutch of eggs to incubate them, often to the exclusion of other behaviors including feeding and drinking.  Broodiness is usually associated with female birds, although males of some bird species become broody.

A wide range of incubation habits is displayed among birds. Body heat from the brooding parent usually provides the constant temperature required.

The most common pattern is the female does all the incubation, as in the Indian Robin.

Indian Robin

Or most of the brooding, as is typical of ospreys.

Osprey

In some species, such as the Whooping Crane, the male and the female take turns incubating the egg.

Whooping Crane

In others, such as the cassowaries, only the male incubates.

Cassowarie

The male Mountain Plover incubates the female’s first clutch, but if she lays a second, she incubates it herself.

Mountain Plover

In all the species of wade-pipers the males become broody rather than the female. The females leave the nest after finishing laying to let the males incubate the eggs and take care of the young.

Red-neck wadepiper

Emu males become broody after their mates start laying, and begin to incubate the eggs before the laying period is complete.

Emu

A small number of atypical birds such as Passeriformes of the genus Molothrus do not become broody but lay their eggs in the nests of other species for incubation, known as brood parasitism.

Striated Pardalote

The Australian Brushturkey (Alectura lathami) also does not become broody, rather, it covers the eggs with a large mound of vegetable matter which decomposes keeping the eggs warm until hatching.

Australian Brush Turkey

The Crab-Plover, (Dromas ardeola), which live on the coasts and islands of the Indian Ocean, let their eggs incubate primarily by the heat of the sun and will leave their nests unattended, occasionally for days at a time.

Crab-Plover

The Namaqua Sandgrouse of the deserts of southern Africa, needing to keep its eggs cool during the heat of the day, stands over them drooping its wings to shade them. The humidity is also critical, and if the air is too dry the egg will lose too much water to the atmosphere, which can make hatching difficult or impossible. As incubation proceeds, an egg will normally become lighter, and the air space within the egg will normally become larger, owing to evaporation from the egg.

Namaqua Sandgrouse

In Hoatzins, some birds (mostly males) help their parents incubate later broods.

Hoatzin

The Megapodes, instead of body heat, use heat generated from rotting vegetable material, effectively creating a giant compost heap

Micronesian Scrubfowl

Incubation refers to the process by which osprey hatch their eggs, and to the development of the embryo within the egg. The most vital factor of incubation is the constant temperature required for its development over a specific period.

Incubation time is defined as the period from the laying of the last egg until that egg hatches. The incubation time of osprey eggs is 34 to 40 days.

An egg is an organic vessel in which an embryo first begins to develop. The egg is the zygote, resulting from fertilization of the ovum, which is expelled from the body and permitted to develop outside the body until the developing embryo can survive on its own.

An embryo is a multicellular diploid eukaryote in its earliest stage of development, from the time of first cell division until hatching.

The act of sitting on eggs to incubate them is called brooding.

Broodiness is the behavioral tendency to sit on a clutch of eggs to incubate them, often to the exclusion of other behaviors including feeding and drinking. Broodiness is usually associated with female birds, although males of some bird species become broody.

Heating the Egg

For an osprey egg to develop normally, it must be exposed for a considerable length of time to temperatures a few degrees below the normal 104 degrees, which is avian body temperature. The ideal incubation temperature for many birds’ eggs is human body temperature, 98.6 degrees. Most birds create the required temperature by sitting on the eggs and incubating them, transferring heat via a temporarily bare area of abdominal skin called the brood patch.

Brood patch on female pied flycatcher

Osprey egg temperature is regulated, in response to the environment, by varying the length of time she sits on them. Ospreys can sense the egg temperature with receptors in their brood patches. This helps them regulate their attentiveness (time spent incubating) more accurately. Since the embryo itself increasingly generates heat as it develops, periods of attentiveness generally decline as incubation progresses.

Eggs are turned periodically – osprey turn their eggs every 20 to 40 minutes. The turning helps to warm the eggs more evenly, and to prevent embryonic membranes from sticking to the shell.

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