!!! More peregrine window washing, this time its Luna that did a face plant into the window!
June 23, 2013 - Toronto - Don Mills
Mark Nash Reports:
June 23rd - 2013
Well, if you were looking for a free sauna bath and/or wanted to loose a little weight through sweating, you needn’t have gone much further than just outside of your front door today! While almost debilitating for most on the fledge watch crews, if you were outside on the fledge watch today, you don’t need me to explain what its like to be 16 hours standing out in the streets today!
While most inexperienced falcon fans would have told you that the young juveniles would not have flown today given the extreme heat and humid-x conditions, nothing could be further from the truth, as several of the young juveniles fledged today for their first flights at two nest sites, while many of the other young juvenile peregrines took to the skies despite the extreme heat and humidity.
I guess that these young peregrines have not reading the same books that some have been reading, or they simply haven’t read the e-mail or memo’s.
Today, the Duncan Mill road fledglings were active, as were both Quest and Kendal. Donna reports that Luna decided to follow in her sisters footsteps, and did her own face plant into one of the office tower windows.
Unlike her sister Carina’s collision with one of the windows this past Friday, Luna didn’t come to the ground and was able to regain her posture and fly off to safely land on a window ledge across the street.
By 9:30pm, both of the fledglings has been fed and tucked down on a window ledge, with Carina on the back side of 220 Duncan Mill Road - (the nest building) and Luna tucked down on a west facing window ledge on the 240 building.
Also, there seemed to be rumour going around that the fledglings has not been few much (or at all yesterday), but that is simply not the case.
Both Bob and I watched three feedings yesterday evening alone, as Quest grabbed both food from poor Kendal and fed both fledglings, and on another occasion, grabbed food away from the hatchlings, - (that Kendal had delivered directly to them), flew over to another ledge, (prepared it) and them flew back over to the fledglings (who were both waiting together on the same ledge, and proceeded to feed them). **See Photos taken by myself that I have attached to this observation report.
Interestingly, history has repeated itself again this year with regards to Kendal’s activities, along with a twist with regards to Quest’s night time roost. By 9:15pm, with both of the fledglings settled in for the evening, both Quest and Kendal had flown over the Thales building to the south east, and had perched on one of the window ledges. They remained there into the darkness as we closed down the fledge watch for the evening.
Also worth noting, that despite Kendal’s best efforts to provide food to his daughters, each and every time he has delivered food directly to them, (when Quest watching), as soon as Quest witnessed the event, (twice this evening, and more than dozen times throughout this past week), she was very quick to fly in and take it from the girls and flew off to ‘prepare it”, and only then would she return with the prepared food and feed it to the fledglings. Both fledglings are still for the most parts being beak fed by Quest. In contrast, Kendal simply drops unprepared food off to the fledglings and flies off, obviously believing that they actually know what to do with it.
Neither of the fledglings have not figured out what to do with the food (let alone unprepared food) that has simply being dropped off and left for them.
It would appear that although Carina is still a little flight shy after her collision with the window this past Friday, she has now taken four short flights back and forth from building to building. I’m sure that she is still bruised and likely experiencing some discomfort as a result of the impact with the window. In addition, this type of thing knocks the confidence out of them, and we are seeing her having to build up her confidence again before she will be flying high again.
The better news, is that she is holding her altitude quite well and back in the saddle again as they say, this time being far more cautious and not so reckless. Her sister Luna has also just learned a valuable lesion and also seems far more cautious inn her flights this evening.
Last but not least, for anyone that has learned to fly an airplane, one of the first lessons I was tough when training for my private pilots licence, was about air density. Hot humid moist air is actually less dense, and lift is far more difficult in these conditions as opposed to colder less humid air.
Most of the birds flights this evening, (including that of the parents) was far more laboured today given the extreme temperatures and the high humid-x.
Let alone, physical difficulty with breathing this ugly hot humid air!
Stay tuned……….
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