Headstarting is a collaborative effort between WWT, BirdsRussia and the RSPB, and occurs as part of the International Arctic Expedition mounted each year by BirdsRussia under the leadership of Dr. Evgeny Syroechkovskiy.

Encouraging signs of Life – 2 July 2011

2 July 2011
A misty, cool day with no sun on offer.   What has for me been a rather anxious couple of waiting days culminated in post dinner meeting with Nikolay, Pavel and Liza.  On their arrival Nige was fielding another ropey skype call to WWT, Pavel joined in to comment. On completion of this the three Russians, Nige and I gathered in the incubation room to take a close look at the eggs. We candled (shining a cool bulb light into them to illuminate) the eggs in turn to inspect the fertility. As suspected, some of the eggs sadly did turn out to be infertile, others showed encouraging signs of life. However, we still have to wait many more days before they potentially hatch. I normally bite my nails but have not been doing so in Russia, I may start again!

Nigel keeping an eye on the eggs, Photo by Martin McGill

A post candling meeting was held in the house which involved much discussion between Birds Russia and WWT, it went on into the night but was a constructive session basically reviewing what we have done so far and what we would like to do next.

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