I have an Eastern Wood Pewee nesting in an oak tree in my yard. One day I watched an adult working diligently on the nest. It was a lone bird, because it had a flipped head feather as an identifier.
The next day, I never saw two adults together, but I think there were two different ones. One would leave the nest to the west, the other would leave the nest to the north to get materials. During incubation I, again, saw only one. I'm used to a male partner either coming to feed the female or the female meeting up with the male for mate feeding. I believe an egg or eggs have hatched, and still am seeing only one. "She" leaves the nest, fly catches some food, returns, leans into the nest and pokes around, and then settles down into the nest. There is no doubt the one sitting on the nest is the same one that returns, because she stays in my field of vision during the whole cycle. I believe another adult (male?) calls periodically in our south yard, but is not in visual contact with the nest (divided from the nest by our house and trees). Will the male start contributing once the eggs are all hatched or the kids get bigger and need more sustenance? Or is this the life of a female Eastern Wood Pewee, going it alone? Thank you for any insight. Molly Miller Inver Grove Hts, Dakota Co ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
