Niagara Gorge Pair On Track
April 23, 2013 - Niagara Falls
Tracy Simpson Reports:
After visiting the Port Colborne nest site last Saturday April 20th, Bruce and I decided to travel over to the Niagara Gorge to look for Diamond and Onyx, the resident adult pair in the gorge. Vicki and Roger, our amazing watchers south of the border, have been monitoring the gorge from Terrapin Point and have been working hard to determine if the pair are nesting again in the powerhouse where they successfully raised young last year. The mist has been strong and the light challenging to get photo confirmation from the American side of the Niagara and they have been doing a wonderful job. In the series of photos that they have taken, one of the shots potentially showed the image of an adult lying down but the mists occluded the photo enough that it was inconclusive. In another photo, the cavity looked empty. Although we cannot see into the nest cavity from the Canadian side, we hoped that we might catch the pair moving through the territory and therefore give us a clue as to what they are up to.
We headed up the parkway to Table Rock, parked and walked down to the retaining wall directly above the powerhouse. We weren’t there but a few minutes when Diamond popped up onto the edge of the roof. She came straight up from below leading us to believe that she was roosting just out of our sights on the face of the powerhouse. I had been watching over the water and did not see the male and so we decided to wait for a while to see if we were witnessing a changeover indicating that they are nesting here or if she was just lounging on a familiar perch. Diamond didn’t stay long before she took off out over the water and banked around into town. We followed her trajectory as best as we could and finally lost her low behind some trees near the Niagara Casino. We scanned all of the buildings and rooftops for signs of her but she was not in visual range.
Given that it was now after 5pm and this time of day being traditionally the “witching hour” when one of the last hunts of the day takes place, we considered the possibility that this appearance by Diamond could possibly be a changeover. We decided to walk down to the Maid of the Mist and take a look back at the powerhouse for her return. We waited for almost an hour with no sign of her before slowly making our way back to the powerhouse retaining wall. We scanned the cityscape again and found her roosting just below the rooftop on the Hilton hotel. I decided that we were staying until we could determine where she was going to settle in for the night. It wasn’t long before she took off of her perch on the Hilton and made a bee line for the gorge. She whipped through about 20 feet above our heads and was out over the water before we could turn ourselves around! She made a few circles out over the river and then swooped back up to the roof of the powerhouse once more. There she found prey remains that she picked away at but was clearly not satisfied with. She consumed what little was left on the bird and then turned her attention north along the powerhouse wall. In seconds she was off like a shot and didn’t turn out over the water or up over the gorge wall. She just simply disappeared. Three minutes later she was back and this time with fresh dinner for herself. When she was done, she roosted briefly and then made two separate flights that looped out over the water and ended with her landing back on the powerhouse roof. We believed she was signalling Onyx to get his tail feathers out of her nest so she could get back to business. Her third and final flight out over the river started off as a run at a gull she didn’t care for (why she picked that one out of the jillions that were there is beyond me) and ended with her flying north to the end of the face of the powerhouse. There she dropped out of sight, skimmed the wall heading towards us, circled out once over the water and then flew straight at the wall. Gone. One minute. Two minutes. Three… …ee-chup, ee-chupp!!! The unbanded male that Marion and I named Onyx popped straight up from below the roof edge of the powerhouse! He sat and preened for a good 10 minutes before taking off towards the falls and disappearing from our view on the cliff face.
Bruce and I believe that when we arrived at 4:30pm we caught the first changeover that gave Diamond her break from incubating. Between 6:30-7:00pm, she returned to the eggs for the night and Onyx headed off to bed. A heartfelt and huge thank you goes out to Vicki and Roger for putting Bruce and I on the right track and monitoring from Terrapin Point; we couldn’t have done it without you. How many eggs they have is still unknown but it is great to see that they are well on their way.
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