{"id":7979,"date":"2018-04-14T15:13:39","date_gmt":"2018-04-14T20:13:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/richard.rathe.org\/?p=7979"},"modified":"2018-04-14T15:19:56","modified_gmt":"2018-04-14T20:19:56","slug":"natural-selection-in-the-nest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/2018\/natural-selection-in-the-nest","title":{"rendered":"Natural Selection in the Nest!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday we kayaked over to the Egret Rookery<\/strong> on Little Lake Santa Fe<\/strong>. There were at least ten great egrets sitting on nests and one nest had a raucous bunch of chicks (3 or 4). Then we noticed there was a much smaller chick on the edge and its siblings were attacking it!<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0After a minute or two we watched the little guy fall sixty feet into the water…<\/p>\n

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Click to Enlarge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We picked him up about two minutes later. He was nearly drowned<\/strong>, limp and barely able to move. Back on shore we let him dry in the sun and he soon perked up. (He also had green skin<\/strong> which I later found out is normal.)<\/p>\n

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Click to Enlarge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We are very fortunate to have a local organization that will take in such an orphan (The Florida Wildlife Care Center<\/a>). By the time I dropped him off he was all fluffy and holding his head up. They will feed him fresh ground fish<\/strong> similar to what he’d get from his mom.<\/p>\n

Siblicide<\/a> is quite common in wading birds. The first hatched have the physical advantage and get most of the food. The younger bird(s) must struggle to survive.<\/p>\n

I saw something similar several years ago with these Spoonbill nestlings.<\/p>\n

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Click to Enlarge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The larger chick was always cutting in front of the other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday we kayaked over to the Egret Rookery on Little Lake Santa Fe. There were at least ten great egrets sitting on nests and one nest had a raucous bunch of chicks (3 or 4). Then we noticed there was a much smaller chick on the edge and its siblings were attacking it!\u00a0After a minute … Continue reading “Natural Selection in the Nest!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[418,413,419],"class_list":["post-7979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-photography","tag-great-egret","tag-roseate-spoonbill","tag-siblicide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7979"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7986,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7979\/revisions\/7986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}