Pair Stayed Gone All Day After Setting For About 14 days

[Charles B]

My pair has been setting since about April 23, with the female staying on the eggs almost all the time. By my calculation they are due to hatch in the next couple of days. But today they both left their six eggs about 9:00 this morning and stayed completely away all day. It has been pretty cold and cloudy for several days, and I had begun to think they had abandoned the nest. But when I checked the cameras tonight, I saw that the female had finally returned at 7:29 PM, followed by the male at 7:40 PM. They had been gone for about 10 hours on a day when the high temperature was only 62.

Is that unusual behavior? And does it harm the eggs to be that cold for a full day so near to their scheduled hatching?

[AidanRois]

I'm wondering this too. I've got a pair that's been sitting for a week, and another that just finished laying two days ago (I think), and we're finally coming out of a cold snap today, but they were all gone all day. I'm glad they were to a point because they did need to go find more to eat than my mealworm offerings, but I wonder if the eggs have gotten chilled at any point during this latest cold snap. I guess we just wait to see what the ladies will do. They'll know when to re-nest I believe.

[starling shooter]

A few years back I had some eggs that were no good after a cold snap. My whole gourd rack started over. Some nests had 7-8 eggs. You could tell the old because they were dingy. I wound up throwing them out and all renested with just slighly fewer eggs the second time.

[David sh]

I was looking for an answer to this same question. I have a few nests that I noticed the females were not sitting in as they have been. I can only imagine that the cool rainy weather for last several days has made them have to leave nests longer to search for food. I would imagine at some point they must choose to eat rather than sit on eggs. I'm sure they will lay a second clutch of eggs once the weather improves??

David

[Emil Pampell-Tx]

Some possibilities:

1)infertile eggs that maybe froze
2)food is extremely scarce, they had to go and try to find some food to stay alive. Them being gone all day tells you that food is hard to find.
3)if some are missing, maybe they died while hunting and will never come back

Truthfully, nobody may ever know, many times things happen that we cannot explain at our colony.

[JR4-AL]

Same thing happening to me. I have 4 nests with eggs and the PM are gone all day and only 4 or 5 show up to roost. I have had as many as 12 covering up my rack and gourds and now it seems they have vanished. Last night, I am fairly certain that two nests went unattended while the other two nests had a pair in each gourd. I am most concerned that my first pair of the season (with six eggs) have not been seen since Sunday morning. No evidence of predation around the site and nests appear fine other than they are damp from all of the rain. I hope this is not a massive die off due to the cold rainy weather!

[Charles B]

It looks like several of us in Alabama and Mississippi have noticed similar behavior with the recent unusually cool and cloudy weather. It has been cold and cloudy by our standards for early May, but nothing compared to what our neighbors in the Midwest have gone through. It makes me wonder just how martins have survived the varying weather for so many years. Other birds with more varied feeding habits must have a considerably easier time.

Every August when I watch thousands of them at our local roost, I marvel that they have managed to survive another year. But don't you think they ought to consider arriving a little later in the season and then staying til September, when we still have lots of bugs and nice comfortable weather?

[Emil Pampell-Tx]

Charles, I think that they rather come early than face the over 100 degrees days in July. Not many insects fly during the 100+ temps. On normal years they do quite well coming early, but this is an unusually cold winter and so very late.