Superb Owl Sunday: Iris Lays Egg #1 for 2014

Originally posted Sunday, 02 February 2014 15:51

It turns out Stephen Colbert was right: today is Superb Owl Sunday!
We knew Iris was acting "eggy" and spending lots of time in the nest.  We now know what egg laying behavior looks like, but didn't see it last night or early this morning.  But this afternoon we were sitting in the living room watching Owl TV as usual.  Hein mentioned Iris' back feathers were starting to lift up, which they do during egg laying.  Then the phone rang and critterwatcher, one of the chat room moderators, said she thought Iris was laying an egg.  Sure enough, she was very obviously laying an egg!
It came out pretty easy...it only seemed to take 5 minutes tops.  She didn't look as nauseous as last year while laying either.
So tune in on February 5 to watch egg #2 be laid.  If Iris is like last year, the eggs were laid EXACTLY 72 hours apart.  So that would be about 3:15 PM Central time.
The really egg-citing thing about this laying date is that this egg should hatch the first day of the International Festival of Owls!  Wow.
Still no egg from Alice, but maybe she's happy with the replica egg I gave her to encourage her to lay her own.