Well Hamilton has 3 beautiful hatchlings at the nest ledge. However, they are trying to decide if the fourth egg has hatched and that there are four.
Picture images and Madame X facing her back to us a lot will not allow us to determine.
We hope that there are 4, however if only 3 they will keep us very busy!
Today, Mother’s Day, and still only one hatch. Perhaps tomorrow will bring a second. Both adults seen in attendance during the day.
Special Thanks to Jason Telasco for snapping these pictures. Far from ideal conditions but we got the little nippers!!
D&G
Bill and I visited the Lift Bridge for about an hour this afternoon. That was about all we could take as the strong winds blowing off the harbour made it quite uncomfortable. “Dad” must have known that it was Mother’s Day as he delivered lunch to “Mom” in the nest box. We thought for sure when we saw the meal delivered that we would see some little white heads popping up looking for food. No such luck. After her meal, Mom settled down once again onto what we hope are viable eggs while Dad stood guard from the face of the Hamilton Tower. Again, no photos to share today.
This photo taken early this morning of the four chicks at the Sheraton Centre Hotel.
Tiago tries to feed a pigeon foot to the young ones.
While the photos were taken some weeks ago, (and the thanks of Euan Reid who gave us permission to post these photos), he was able to catch several shots of this adult female on site copulating with the territorial male at the Burlington lift bridge. While the coloured marker band digits on the bottom of the band are still a little hard to read, it does appear to be a Black K over a Green 83. We are waiting for some additional information on this band and should have something posted soon, stay tuned………
The question still remains,,, is this the current female at Burlington???? We are hoping that you can get your cameras warmed up to capture the ID’s and confirm the “who’s who” this year at the Burlington Bridge nest site.
We are super happy to confirm that we do indeed have two chicks. Freddie and Voltaire are doing what appears to be a very dedicated job. Special thanks to Bob Hall Brooks and Jason Telasco for 100% scope I.D. of the two and Jason will be forwarding some photos. Two young ones just in time for mothers day how timely. Up until now we didn’t want to risk disturbing the two by going above for a peak so we had to wait for these results. Therefore we are unsure how many eggs there were or if we may still get another chick but we’re thinking this is it. After last years failure we were reluctant to get too excited plus we have seen another peregrine couple mate on the top of the bridge while our couple was underneath the bridge so we had started to wonder about just about everything we knew or had heard about peregrines. Stayed tuned for photos. Dennis and Gwen.
A quick check on the King St. nest and a first hatch for 2009. One can clearly see the shell and in the other image, the female lifts up so slightly to see the newly hatched beneath her.
The other sequences of pictures I found rather odd, the female was dragging herself through the gravel. In the one image the new hatch can be seen. Who knows why she did this?
Web cam images below
Some bad news, some good news, and some interesting news!
First the bad news. After a detailed inspection of the upper roof area and the lower ledges below, we initially focused our attention on the new nest ledge on the south west corner that Kathy had reported earlier seeing the birds on. Utilizing a wireless remote camera lowered by a small thin wire down from the upper roof area to the nest ledge below, we saw the bad news: several broken egg shells, but no signs of hatchlings or adult peregrines could be found. Knowing that it was much too early for a hatch, we continued our inspection on each of the other ledges as they wind their way around the building. Finally as we approached the north west corner, we were finally greeted by an adult airborne peregrine, rather annoyed by our presence. Now the Good news! As we lowered the camera down to the ledge on the north west corner we were able to view two eggs - (quite different in colour as the photo indicates) with a second adult peregrine standing on the outer rim of the same ledge. While the photos are terrible, they do show the two eggs and the second adult peregrine standing on the ledge flashing. A very quick “eyeball glance” confirmed the solid black band number of 88 over H. It appears that the pair have changed nest ledges and re-clutched. Given that copulation was observed only yesterday, (and the fact that broken eggs have been discovered), they are obviously in the middle of laying a second clutch of eggs. This being observed, full time incubation won’t likely begin until the second last egg is finally laid. We will have to keep a very close eye on the happenings to get a handle on whats going on.
Kathy reports today that she observed several copulations by the adults today at the Yellow pages nest site and we are very suspicious as to what is happening out there,, due in part that the last time observations were made, there was only one adult being seen at any given time. The adults were observed during a changing of the guard on several occasions, and this typically suggests that full time incubation is already well underway. Given this news, we will have to do a site visit to better understand what is happening, as their should not be copulation going on after eggs have been laid and full time incubation has started. Stay tuned, more to come tomorrow…..