!!! Banding Sucess with Canada’s (and North America’s) First peregrine fledgling of 2014
May 11, 2014 - Mississauga - Executive Centre
Mark Nash Reports:
Sunday May 11th - 2014 Mothers Day!
A huge than you to Anne Yagi of the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources at the Vineland Ontario MNR district office Ontario along with her daughter Erica and Jon Planck who gave up a portion of their Sunday morning and Mothers Days to meet with me to band our little MEC male fledgling, Canada’s First hatched peregrine, and the obvious first to fledge. An additional big thank you to MEC security for all of their support and assistance, and to the MEC management group and Colliers for all of their support and assistance.
Actually, after checking with many our good friends in the southern USA states where their resident state nesting peregrines are typically far ahead of our peregrines here in Canada and have long since produced and hatched their eggs, this little Mississauga Ontario peregrine hatchling turns out to be the first peregrine hatchling for the 2014 season in North America!! Talk about taking everyone by surprise!
With Mark Heaton out of province for the weekend, and Anne having only returned herself from the USA late Saturday night, I was scrambling yesterday trying to find someone that had the solid Black Canadian recovery bands in hand so that the little fledgling could be banded before being released back to the wild and to his parents care.
After many calls later and mutable streams of text communications with both Mark and then Anne, I was finally able to arrange to meet Anne at her Vineland district office this morning at 11am, (some 240 kms and a three hour round trip by car), little “Mason” had has been named, was successfully weighed, checked for his health, banded and was soon on his way back to Mississauga and his awaiting parents. His first, and hopefully his only car ride that he will ever have to take in his lifetime.
After spending some three plus days on the lower roof top where he was stranded, (and without substantial real food or water), we only felt that it was fair to offer him a decent meal Saturday evening before his release today, which he readily accepted without any complaint during his feeding, but in true form, then went after poor Marion after feeding him when he had eaten his fill. Yes, a real wild one for sure! It is although nice to see this feisty healthy attitude.
I arrived back at the MEC nest site at approx.: 1:30pm and met with Bruce who had arrived moments earlier to resume the fledge watch me with after Mason’s release. By 2:30pm, Mason was back to the nest building rooftop and moments later was joined by his mom. An additional thank you to Grace from Brampton who joined us for the fledge watch this afternoon.
Less than 40 minutes after releasing Mason to the upper rooftop of MEC #1, his mother was bringing him in food, and did so at three other occasion throughout the balance of the day.
Interesting enough, further suspicions brewed amongst ourselves with regards to the identity of the resident male. It is quite odd for this particular adult male, in that at no time over the past three days while watching the adult pair interact with the young fledgling, at no time did we sever see the resident adult male show any interest in the young fledgling or did he ever attempt to drop food to the fledgling, let alone with trying to ever feed it. Mom fed the young fledgling on three other occasions to day.
In addition to this, we saw the adult pair actually involved in copulation on four separate occasions,,, and yesterday, the male was caught on camera in-involved in some serious nest bowl scrapping in nest box! ** Bruce and Tracy also witnessed this same happening (copulation) on both the Friday and Saturday on numerous occasions throughout the fledge watch.
Very strange behaviour indeed given that the female has already hatched and currently dealing with a young fledgling! Hmmmm, can’t wait to see how this season will play out at this nest site given these unusual behaviour. The obvious question has been asked and still remains unanswered, is this the same resident male of past seasons or has there been a turnover of the resident adult male since the hatch?
Some quick particulars on little Mason recorded at banding today,,, weighted in at 636 grams, Black Banded R over 53.
Photos courtesy of Jon and Anne who manned the camera during his banding today.
Stay tuned, more to come………
