Inventory of IOP Nest 2

This nest was found by Karen Thompson, Kathy Jahn, and Penny Smith with her newborn baby Zelda and was left to incubate there in situ. We had been watching and waiting for something to happen and finally four days ago we saw a couple of hatchling tracks after 67 days of incubation which was very late. We suspect that the heavy rain last weekend and the high wind may have erased the tracks from all the others. Today we found out that all but 9 of the 142 eggs laid failed to develop and hatch. Most of them contained old yolks, and we only saw one where an embryo even started to develop. So hatch success was only 6.3%. We usually have a few nests that do not do well for one reason or another, and this was sad to see. We will never know the cause.

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