!!! Don Mills - ICICI nest - Don Mills & Eglinton. Confirmed hatch!
May 17, 2013 - International, National and Local News
Mark Nash Reports:
May 17th - 2013
After more than an hour trying to get a peak at the new hatchlings, mom was not giving up much! The good news of course, it that we can confirm our suspicions and haven’t lost our touch. While the web cams really do confirm the story and provide a mountain of scientific information, (in addition to the detailed happenings going on in the nest ledge),, good old “time-in” on site observations and having detailed knowledge of the peregrines biology, tells a similar story.
After more than 17 years working with peregrines, not much escapes us.
That being said, even intense monitoring can still lead to mysteries and unknowns, and that is the case at the ICICI Don Mills nest site. During our observations, the resident adult female stayed tight down on her clutch and was not bothered at all with our presence from above. Curiously, the new resident adult male was no where to found and we had a uninterrupted observation period.
After more than an hour of observing, I can confirm that there has in fact been a hatch, and we did get a very short peak at what appeared to be at least one, if not two white fluffy squiggly balls under the brooding / incubating adult female. The easy part was being able to observe at least two un-hatched eggs, but its every early in the hatch cycle. We believe that the first hatched happened on or about the 15th or 16th of May, which would consistent to when we believe that the pair went down into full time incubation duties and actually started cooking as we say.
With a very cold damp rainy and snowy spring, most of the southern Ontario peregrine pairs went down onto full time incubation from the day the first egg was laid, and as such, we expected that hatch rate would be lower as the failure rate we documented several years ago when similar spring like conditions resulted in a low hatch rate.
So what we can confirm, is that we have a hatch for sure and our congratulations go out to Amexon Property management and all of the great folks at 150 Ferrand drive.
Stay tuned, we will be back on Tuesday after the long weekend to do further observations.
