July 4th 2013, PAJA Pair 2

This might be the final time I am able to observe either pair. Both chicks of PAJA Pair 2 have hatched and as far as I can tell the single egg of PAJA Pair 1 has also hatched. I observed Pair 1 today, and they were defensive but not much when I was close to the nest. When I checked the nest there was no egg so they likely have a chick in the area but I did not see it. Since the chicks will now be able to move around, it will not be easy to observe them, even though they will stay close to the nest for 2-3 weeks. In my observations of PAJA Pair 2 yesterday, I have added a new behavior. Although I have Brood defined as attending brood/young, I did not include in the definition the act of feeding the young. So I added Feeding which is defined as bringing food to young and feeding them. I was too far away to tell what was being given to the chicks, or which was receiving the food.

PAJA Pair 2              Date: 7/4/14        Time spent observing: 13:14 – 14:34

Temperature: 56 F     Wind 11 mph      30% Cloud Cover

Type of Behavior	Total Time Dark Morph	Percent time spent doing behavior	Total Time Light Morph	Percent time spent doing behavior
Defending	8	10	6	7.5
Incubating	0	0	0	0
Hunting/Foraging	34	42.5	0	0
Preening	4	5	1	1.25
Loafing	27	33.75	8	10
In flight	3	3.75	0	0
Altercation	2*	2.5	1*	1.25
Brood	1	1.25	64	80
Feeding	1	1.25	0	0

Total time spent observing: 80 minutes

* = Altercation with King Eider pair. They were dive-bombing them and the eiders were fighting back.

With these observations, I can conclude that the female of the pair is in fact the light-morph. I was hoping to get that down for Pair 1 as well, but am unlikely to figure it out. 

Pretty freshly hatched chick in nest

More alert chick just outside of nest

Both chicks

Below is an updated version of the proximity to nest table I included in the last post for PAJA Pair 2. According to these observations, they do indeed increase their defensive behavior as the eggs are closer to hatching and when they have young. I also saw this with Pair 1, and am thinking the day the fox was in the area, the chick may have been hatching or hatched. 

Date	Distance Observer from nest when pair began defense (in meters)
6/16/14	40
6/19/14	66
6/19/14	30*
6/23/14	78
6/27/14	95**
6/27/14	106**
7/4/14	129

* = distance I was able to stand from the nest when the bird went back to incubating, this could be due to cold weather

** = only observed the proximity to the nest when they began to defend, as I was busy doing the other surveys in the area for that day

Light-morph in flight