On first vision this morning – first day of the southern Spring – Swift is quietly snoozing in her scrape so it’s hard to tell how she’s going up there but after checking ledge cameras recordings from earlier this morning we do indeed have a 2nd egg (sorry skygirlblue – I was wrong after all… ref previous news item comments!).
The early morning video clip of Swift taking a break and showing us her work can be viewed here …
YIPPEE!!! Congrats on Egg #2!!!
Oh..and Scott…I wasn’t worried!!! Several years ago the female in Columbus, Ohio decided to wait 8 days between #1 and #2…highly unusual..had us all on pens and needles… and even more shocking, it hatched!!!
Congrats on Egg #2!!
bonjour, as it is nice to see that the season looks good ….. I hope Swift will lay at least four eggs this year and they will hatch is always interesting to see more chicks in the nest, but we are still far from good day today Scott!!!
Great news about a 2nd egg! Here’s hoping for 1 or 2 more!
Look forward to egg number 3!!
Hi all,
At this stage Swift seems to be quite happy to settle in now, which normally is a sign that she’s in no more pain from further eggs. Hard to tell and as skygirlblue has said, nothing is really too surprising, so we’ll keep hoping. Which raised a question between Cilla and myself the other day about a seemingly low average number of eggs per season so far. In yearly order egg totals have been 2, 3, 2 and now (so far) 2, which seems to be lower than world averages. It’s all conjecture of course but one could possibly ask questions of altitude (we’re nearly 1km up), recent climate, food supply, fertility of one or both birds, eyrie size and shape etc. Any thoughts out there? It’s obviously not alarming at all as our fledging averages have been very good but the Project is now old enough that we can begin to graph trends.
Scott
It could be all or any of the reasons you mentioned Scott. We do have a female here that has never produced more than 3 eggs at the most, she goes about the same rate as Swift, this year she only laid 2 eggs and both hatched, though only 1 made it to fledging. She’s had 2 different mates over the years so it’s likely something to do with her but she’s raised some healthy fledglings and one of her girls from 2 years ago we heard this year is herself successfully nesting elsewhere. So I guess you could argue quality over quantity 🙂
The past few years here in Southern Ontario we’ve seen a gradual decline in either number of eggs produced and/or number of eggs that actually hatch This year was especially challenging as we had a colder than normal spring, wild storms and then went right into stifling hot temperatures.
Fortunately we’ve seen an increase in nesting pairs/ sites so that kind of offset the failure rate or decline at established pair sites.