Tonight we had both Great Horned Owls and Barred Owls calling, although not at the same time or from the same direction.
Driving onto Highway 280 in the metro, I noticed that one of the sumac berry clusters right along the side of road was brighter red than the others and then realized that it was a Cardinal. Friends of ours who have an eagle's nest atop a large oak tree in their yard on West River Road in Minneapolis, report that they arrived home and noticed the eagles' nest was gone. They looked around the base of the tree and did not find a pile of sticks or any of sticks from the nest. The adults and two fledged juveniles were still around, but the nest had vanished. They questioned their neighbor who reported seeing the adults disassembling the nest. When next they checked the nest was gone. At that point the conversation swerved into the merits of downsizing the home so that the children no longer had a bedroom to return to. They hypothesized that disassembling the nest would encourage the young to move away. I told them that I had never heard of eagles or any raptors disassembling a nest, although I have heard of Great Horned Owls wearing out nests that sometimes do not last long enough to see the young fledge. Steve Weston On Quigley Lake in Eagan, MN [email protected] ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
