Catching Up - MEC Watch on Wed. June 12
June 12, 2013 - Mississauga - Executive Centre
Tracy Simpson Reports:
Today at the MEC watch Sante and Cass pulled out all of the stops, used every trick in their arsenal, to get these girls to fly but today just wasn’t launch day. I arrived at around 9am after helping out at Etobicoke Sun Life through the wee hours to find the box empty and that Ashley, with her bloomer pantaloons, out on the nest ledge. What has drawn her down at this stage of the game is the antics of her sister Catherine who was currently playing Hide and Seek with her. Oh yes, Catherine has just discovered and is currently enjoying the fact that the ledge is a well that they can drop down into and explore. Fun for them, not for me when I am looking for them!! A moment later Ashley flops down into the well and disappears from view for a few minutes before popping back up. Wait a minute, that’s not Bloomer girl… …that’s Catherine. For the next hour it was up and down, under the box and up the other side, one then two then one then none. At this point I hadn’t seen any food delivered to the girls and they were very vocal about it. Marg arrived to help out and we set up camp at MEC 3. What’s so great about this watch point is that we get to engage a lot of the tenants at MEC 3 and by midday people were popping out and seeking us for updates. Cass and Sante are sooooo hard line. Not a morsel went into the ledge and by noon the kids were furiously screaming and running along the ledge. Both adults would fly in every 15 minutes or so and wind them up for a flight but they still were not taking the bait. At one point both parents landed on the window section to the right of the box and both disappeared into the well. Ashley, the less advanced girl, contemplated “jumping the gap” to the ledge where her parents had disappeared into just to see what they were doing but thankfully never made the attempt a reality. She’s a few days from ready. By lunchtime both girls gave up their attempt at screaming pigeons down out of the air and went to the box for a nap. Once they were sound asleep, Sante flew over to the nest ledge as quite as could be, crept along the ledge and then BAM, jumped up on to the nest box landing platform and scared the girls awake! He darted off as fast as he could hoping that one would follow but nope, not going to fall for that! Katherine from MEC 3 joined us and the antics continued throughout the afternoon. Still no food. Lots of teasing, fly bys, land and go tactics and perching just out of reach. Oh yeah, and lots of screaming! An Osprey dared to fly through at around 1pm and was promptly seen off by Cass and all settled again for a while. By the evening, still no food. I was quite prepared to fly up there and feed them myself if it settled them down as I could hear them howling at the parents from a block away over rush hour traffic. Sheesh. At 6pm, Cass did a fly by of the nest box at ledge level which drew Catherine out like a dart. In her fury she grabbed a fist full of feathers and debris from the nest box and as Cass passed the box, Catherine released what she had in her foot looking as if she had just flung gack at her mother in a total rage about the lack of food service. At 8pm, Cass flew over to MEC 2 and began to whine. Having watched her for a while now, Cass gets whining like that when Sante has made a kill. Food was coming. Sante arrived 10 minutes later with a medium sized package and flew directly to the nest box. Cass flew over right behind him screaming, Ashley was on the platform and met Dad screaming, Catherine was in the box screaming and when Sante landed, well all broke loose. Ashley grabbed the food from Sante and ran into the box. She ran into a brick wall named Catherine who took the food off of her and began to eat. Cass bumped Sante off of the nest box and the two adults were airborne over MEC 3 while the two girls battled over the food. Thank the stars that 5 minutes later, the entire family went to sleep.