25 Dec and this Christmas is bitter sweet...

We lost one of the chicks.

This is the first time in five years that we've had a fatality in the nest. For a number of hours, we all noticed that the little chick didn't move despite PPO's best efforts to coax the chick to eat.

I took the liberty of copying Bob Pruner's report from Facebook about what he saw, as we were sleeping at the time:

"I am so sorry to see that the youngest PPO owlet suddenly took ill. Here is what I saw. It seemed fine yesterday. Then this morning it appeared to be sleeping in the back corner but did not get up all day even when PPO tried to feed it. She fretted over it between feeding the other owlet but finally at about 12:30am Wednesday(nest time) appeared to decide that it would no longer respond and carried its inert body to the front of the nest where we could see that it was no longer alive. She has moved it a couple of more times as I write this and may remove it from the nest by morning. My condolences to all the chatters who love this little owl and especially to Tracy and Allan. Rest in peace little Rosie (as some of us had taken to calling her/him) PPO appears to be taking it in stride and concentrating on caring for the remaining owlet. What a trooper!"