!!! Three hatchlings!!
May 09, 2011 - Etobicoke - Sun Life Centre
Mark Nash Reports:
An exciting afternoon! First stop today ended up to be my last stop and I was hard pressed to leave. Arrived in the afternoon trying to time my visit upon Jack arrival, I made it just in time. After making my way up to the Kingsway Condo roof, I was greeted with some old friends from Skyreach who were just finishing up their activities for the day. After an half an hour of chit chat and moments after the Skyreach crew departed, Jack finally showed up carrying food and landed on the nest ledge where his mate Angel was patiently laying down in the nest tray. Seconds after his arrival, Angel stood up and flew off the nest tray to get some exercise.
Jack remained on the corner of the nest ledge and did not go up into the tray. It looked as if he had not been given permission to go up to the nest tray or somewhat confused by actions as he remained fast exactly where he had landed with food in hand.
Over the next few minutes we both watched his mate fly around the nest building several times all the time screaming at her. After several go-rounds around the nest building, Angel finally returned to the nest ledge, and in a single motion grabbed the food from him and stepped up to the nest tray, hesitating several minutes before she finally stepped into the nest tray itself. That’s when the real interesting stuff started.
Suddenly out of nowhere, one by one, three tiny fluffy white wobbly heads and necks appeared from the centre of the nest tray! With the camera snapping away like a full automatic machine gun, I could hardly believe what I was seeing.
For the next 10 minutes I watched with sheer delight while Angel fed the smallest morsels of food one by one to each of the tiny hatchlings. They couldn’t have eaten more than a thimble size quantity of food between the three of them despite Angels best efforts to encourage them to eat more. It seemed to take forever to feed them, as on one hatchling could hold it head up for more than a few seconds.
After the feeding, Angel removed the small uneaten remains of the blood soaked carcase dropping it from her beak only several feet from the nest ledge. In the same round about flight, she returned to the nest ledge, then to the nest tray and quickly resumed her brooding activities by covering the three tiny hatchlings from my view. I was at this point I finally noticed one reddish brown un-hatched egg.
Jack remained on the nest ledge for several minutes and finally flew off from the nest ledge to the west and disappeared from my view. Over the next hour, Angel never stirred an inch and remained brooding. It was quite apparent that the show was over (at least for the time being), and I departed in an effort to get over to Oxford and the SunLife centre to tell them of the good news and to get back on the road to the Toronto head office before the heat of the rush hour traffic was in full motion.
Again, many thanks to the great staff and management group of the Kingsway on Park Condo for their support in allowing me access to the roof to confirm that a hatch had occurred.
Now for the time consuming job of going over , editing and resizing the 1000 plus photos that I ended up taking. Oh my goodness!!
