Overconfident Mason Has a Treetop Adventure!
May 18, 2014 - Mississauga - Executive Centre
Tracy Simpson Reports:
I started the watch today at dawn with little Mason right where I left him on the top of the windows at MEC 2. He was already up and active and it wasn’t long before he took his first flight off of the windows and headed straight for MEC 1. He landed on the roof retaining wall where Rogue met him with breakfast and he was beak fed until he was quite full. He played and relaxed for a while and then made another flight to MEC 3. His landings have improved greatly and his flights are really strong. He left MEC 3 and circled out over Robert Speck Parkway and headed back to MEC 1. This time he flew parallel to the top of the nest ledge windows and with a bit of back flapping he was home!!!
Triumphant at his return to the nest ledge, he spent the better part of the morning playing and bouncing around the box and flew up to the top of the box several times. He ran the ledge, hopped the gap and made his way down to the northeast corner of the nest building. He was doing great! Renegade met him on the corner and had brought in a rather odd looking piece of meat. It was a very dried up piece of remains of a previous meal that he held out and offered to Mason who was more than happy to take it. Two bites into it, Mason discarded the piece in the window well hoping for something more. Twenty minutes later, Renegade returned to the same ledge, entered the well and retrieved the dry crusty bit that Mason had discarded. He approached Mason with this gift a second time and Mason was happy to take it again… …for all of a second before he dropped it back down into the ledge. What made this exchange so odd and funny was that an hour later, Renegade made a third attempt to sell Mason on this dried up chunk of cracker like remains and this time Mason made sure to pitch it off the building and be done with it.
Several more flights were made by Mason in the afternoon with yet another excellent approach and entry to the nest ledge. He finally settled over on MEC 2 at around 1pm where Rogue brought him a huge pigeon lunch that he happily gorged away on. Shannon joined me at the watch just after Mason finished his lunch and he was relaxing on the ledge. We talked for a bit while we were watching Mason and then Shannon asked whether I thought he would be doing any flights this afternoon as she was so excited to see him fly. Just then Mr. “Too cool for school” decided to fly off of MEC 2 and try to land on the porch of the nest box. He seriously miscalculated and veered off around the north side of MEC 1. Rogue met him in the air and attempted to steer him up to the windows rather than have him leave the property as he was destined to do based on his speed and trajectory. He turned right into the windows on MEC 1 and flumped up against them. He quickly recovered and flew back towards MEC 3. Shannon and I ran down to the west side to see if he made it but we knew that he was too low. He flumped into the windows again and this time lost quite a bit of height. He did recover himself and flew low out across Robert Speck Parkway and landed in a tree by the creek.
Shannon and I raced across the street to make sure that he was alright. When we got there we could see that he wasn’t just on the tree, he was really in it about 20 feet above us. He sat on a small branch looking tired and dejected and was surrounded on all sides by more branches. Boy was he stuck. We set up nearby in case he came out of the tree and down to the ground and at the same time called for some backup. Bruce came out to the site as well as Winston and the four of us watched as he struggled to balance, find a comfortable spot, nap and sort himself out. As the afternoon wore on into the evening we discussed what we were going to do about little Mr. should he decide to stay in the tree. He was too high to reach for a rescue and the branch he was on too thin. We agreed that he was as safe as he could be from the local wildlife and that he wasn’t interested in any flights right now and so we left him to sort it all out. I stayed until almost 11pm to ensure that he was tucked in and safe at which time Bruce and I made plans for the morning. We were both going to meet on site at 4:30am before the light started in the sky just in case he began to get active early. Oh boy…
I cannot thank all of you enough that have helped out with Mason’s treetop adventure this evening. I would especially like to thank Bruce, Shannon and Winston for being there for Mason and for me as I could not have done it without you. What a great crew!!
See you at dawn Mr. Mason. Pictures to follow soon.