Little Boy Blue Doing Great and Sister Red Fledges
June 22, 2013 - Etobicoke - William Osler
Tracy Simpson Reports:
After the fabulous flying of Little boy blue yesterday, I was looking very forward to seeing what today had to bring. We started off the morning with little blue upon the retaining wall of the hospital and his three siblings on the ledge screening their hearts out. One of the females with red tape over her U.S. Fish and Wildlife band was actively flapping at the southeast corner of the nest building. I sat watching her thinking to myself she’s going to be the next one that’s going to fly and fly she did. She took off into the air and no sooner had she begun to flap her wings when dad came roaring in out of nowhere. Based on her height and trajectory she was destined for the other side of Humber College Boulevard, a place where only low buildings and danger existed. Hurricane would have none of it. He gently guided his daughter down to the roof of the medical center building on the hospital property. There she stood on top of the very peak of the building and was very unhappy about what had just occurred. She was quite determined to make her way across the street only to have dad interfere and she let him know how dissatisfied she was with his attempts to dissuade her. It was about this time that the rains began to roll in and here she was fully exposed on the top of the low medical building roof. She didn’t have a choice but to get wet today and so she decided it was worth enjoying. She dipped her tail, flapped her wings and vocalized as the rain soaked her feathers for the first time. After the rain tapered off she spent the next few hours preening her feathers back into pristine condition, as pristine as could be for juvenile, and enjoyed herself roosting the morning away. All throughout this her little brother blue was flying around the building testing out his wings and improving upon his landings. While his flying was looking great his landings, not so much. I will say this though compared with yesterday’s barrel roll landings on the ledge he was at least now skidding to a halt instead. This was much to the amusement of his two siblings still sitting on the ledge watching all of this take place. All was fairly quiet for the better part of the day with the adults bringing in a few feedings here and there for the kids still on the ledge. This of course enraged little red sitting on the medical center roof top and she ran back-and-forth screaming her head off telling the world all about how mom and dad were not giving her any of the spoils. It’s at this point that Bruce and I decided to switch nest sites. That,s when all the fun began. Little red took a flight off of the medical center roof and she was not able to gain altitude. She went low around to the south side of the hospital and losing altitude came to the ground. Bruce had just left the site to run a brief errand when all of this occurred leaving watcher Winston in charge. Little Miss red gave Winston quite the run for his money. He followed her around to the south side of the hospital where he located her on the ground, but when he attempted to rescue she deeked him out and was flapping her way around to the other side. Winston caught up with little red once again and attempted to make another ground rescue but once again she had other plans. She opened her wings, caught some air and was back again around to the far side of the hospital. What concerned Winston most was that she was coming close to the roadways that surround the hospital. I raced back from MEC three to the hospital to find that the calisthenics exercises were now over and Little Miss red sat perched in a tree by the roadway. What to do with little miss red. We positioned ourselves to watch and see if she was going to take another flight and attempt to make it home. We stayed until we could hardly see but she was not to be moved even though she was being strongly encouraged by the local robins to get out of their tree and make her way back to her own nest site. The robins, about five of them, were absolutely relentless in their dive bombing of this female and on many occasions actually made full contact with her. This wasn’t enough to move her to the air and so she decided to spend the night in the tree. Bruce and I agreed that at first light, she would most likely take her next flight and so it was that we decided to leave her there and come back the next morning at dawn.
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