News from PixController
31st July 2010

As if the loss of Phoenix on the Hornby Eagle cam was not bad enough, PixController had a very unfortunate end to both of their House Wren nest cameras.

In the beginning of July House Wren Nest #1 was attacked by a juvenile black rat snake that ate two eggs while the female was still laying her clutch. (Watch it here) The day after the attack the female bird continued to lay the rest of her clutch of 4 eggs.

As fate would have it several weeks later the same black rat snake returned and killed the female house wren and consumed her. This process took almost an hour since the snake was much smaller than the bird. It was hard to watch this take place, but they wanted to capture this on video since this is a rare event to witness. After the snake consumed the bird it quickly ate the remaining 4 eggs and left. Here is an edited version of these events, but we must warn you this is a graphic video and not something for all viewers. (Watch it here.)

On a brighter note the eggs in the second house wren nest started hatching the next day. Within two days all six of the eggs had hatched and both parents started the busy work of feeding the chicks. However, in a sad turn of events this nest was also the subject of predation. Viewers woke up one morning to find the nest empty. They are not sure what happened to this nest site or if the female bird survived. It happened between 3AM and 6AM EST and there was no way to review the video.

Sad and even gruesome as some of this is, it is all part of the 'nature' of the wild. These nest boxes were placed in the wild and not in a back yard, protected from most predators and as such prone to the same risk as any other one. On average over 50% of small birds chicks do not make it to fledging and 50% of those that do do not make it to adulthood either. This is why clutch sizes are so large in smaller birds, and why they lay several clutches a year.

Let us hope the next nest cams will fare better!