7th and 8th Nest Check

The Purple Martin season is in full swing! Many of the nests have hatched out, while some of them still contain eggs. The Memory Lake Colony has 16 nests with young and two nests with eggs. The Snake River Colony has 13 nests with young and two nests that have eggs are that are expected to hatch soon. The Pokegama Lake Colony has one nest that hatched on the 6th of June, the other nests are just now beginning to hatch. Unfortunately, there were two nests that didn't hatch-out any of their eggs. One nest containted five eggs and the other nest contained four eggs. I cracked each of the eggs to see if they contained embryos. The eggs in the nest with four eggs only contained yolk; the female was likely infertile as these eggs were being incubated for nearly two weeks. Three of the five eggs in the second nest contained half developed embroys while the other two contained only yolk; perhaps the female was predated by a hawk? The ECE Colony now has 13 nests with young and nine nests with eggs. This colony is also having its share of bad luck in addition to the House Sparrow attack that occured early in the season. Five nests that contained eggs failed to hatch. Two nests contained only two eggs, it is likely that these nests contained more eggs but were destroyed be the House Sparrow before they could recorded; the remaining eggs may have simply been abandoned. Three of the nests that didn't hatch contained five eggs each! All 15 eggs contained only yolk! These nests were also incubated for nearly two weeks. Perhaps these females were also infertile, or were never fertilized by a male... one will never know!?!? The ECE Colony does have some good news - a new clutch of eggs was laid on June 24th! The earliest possible fledge date for these young is August 8th! The Rush Lake Colony is doing farily well. Four of the nests now contain young and five of the nests contain eggs. In total, ECMPMR colonies consist of 77 nests, with a total of 346 eggs laid!