July 1st Ashley Makes It Home
July 01, 2013 - Mississauga - Executive Centre
Bruce Massey Reports:
Thank you for your continued patience as we try to catch up on the stories of the families at various nest sites. Dawn to dusk at the sites leaves little time for anything else and so our posting went by the wayside. Still, with that said, it is important to finish telling the tale.
Ashley was resighted this morning, Day 20 of the watch, by Margaret and Katherine on the west side of the Morguard building. She hung around that building off and on throughout the day and finally took the long flight back home. She flew straight over to MEC 3 and landed like a pro. She was home. The rest of the day was spent back and forth between the MEC complex buildings exploring her world at home and chasing the parents for food.
Why so long? Why so hard? We’ve talked about this amongst ourselves and we believe that a key factor in the length of her “getting it together” was the loss of her sister Catherine. Ashley has no competition for food and attention from her parents. Ashley has no other siblings to prompt her to fly and train. Her training could now be in her time and at her pace as there is no other juveniles to urge her on or compete with her. We have seen this scenario play out at several other single chick nest sites and it is very consistent. While it was not as long a watch in all cases, it certainly extended the training period well beyond the norm.
We are really pleased that Ashley has now returned home and is staying high. It is our hope then that the watch can offcially be scaled back as of this day, July 1st, to site checks and monitoring. The dawn to dusk at MEC can now slow down. Thank goodness as we are all exhausted and with other sites still requiring our attention, we can now breathe a sigh of relief. Congratulations Ashley, you’re a big girl now!!