!!! Day 2 at Scarborough Yellow Pages fledge watch. Lorne has fledged and he is safe, but low!
June 28, 2014 - Scarborough - Yellow Pages
Mark Nash Reports:
Saturday June 28th - 2014
A huge thank you to Dave, Cathy, Sally, Alan, Winnie and Marion for coming out today to help with the Scarborough fledge watch as it really made it an enjoyable day (and MUCH EASIER) to keep track of the babies.
For the most parts, it was a slow day with the exception of our first to fledge that happened shortly after 6am this morning, when the first little peregrine - (Lorne) took his first flight. Not what you would call a spectacular flight as he couldn’t resist the urge to follow his mother - (Linn) as she did one of her many close fly-byes to check in on the trio in the nest ledge.
He struggled to hold his altitude as he flew west along the north side of the building across Milner out over the parking lot when both his mother (Linn) and his Dad, (Ruben) flew in beside him nudging him up as best they could. He was eventually herded by both his parents back around towards the nest building and eventually made a soft crash landing on the lover over hang just above the north entrance of the nest building. There his stayed for the rest of the day spending most of his time sleeping, with spurts of running around to the south, west, and north west canopy top where he finally bedded down as darkness fell at the end othe day.
The other two hatchlings were content to spend the entire day on the nest ledge, but not after causing me incredible grief in the early part of the day when I was alone, as there was only two of the three juveniles that were visible until after 2pm, when Dave finally spotted the third juvenile on the nest ledge. This only came after I spent most of the morning running laps around the building, while checking out every parking lot, street corner, and beating the bush to the east of the nest site building believing that the second juvenile had actually taken its first flight when I was distracted following Lorne around on the west side.
I had forgotten that this is a very tough nest site to do a fledge watch by yourself!
Throughout the day, Linn - (the mom), stopped in to the nest ledge and spent some extended time with the two hatchlings in some very tender family moments, while Ruben did many fly-overs around the various building elevations to keep track of everyone. They are very attentive parents that’s for sure!
Linn brought in food only twice all day, twice to the nest ledge at 3pm with a large pigeon and a second very small package to the nest ledge just after 6pm.
It was really funny, as the first food package (the large prepared pigeon) as dropped at the nest ledge by Linn for the two hatchlings and she flew off and roosted on the upper elevation just above them and watched for about 15 minutes. Both the two juveniles screamed at both her and prepared pigeon unable to figure out how to get it from the nest ledge floor into their mouths!! Babies!!
Linn finally broke down and flew back to the nest ledge and proceeded to beak feed the two juveniles with the pigeon. Sadly, the little fledgling named Lorne who took his first flight earlier in the am that ended up on the lower overhang above the sidewalk, was not rewarded with any food or his efforts and went without food all day.
It is funny (although not likely very funny for little Lorne), that mom at one point late in the evening, flew into the nest ledge, grabbed a small piece of food (basically taking out the garbage from the nest ledge as the parents often do), and flew around to a higher elevation just above where little Lorne was roosting, and proceeded to eat it in front of him! There was no attempt to offer him anything all day, and really not typical of the usual reward that many of the other adults do after one of the kids takes their first flights. Hmmmm, I can’t help but think that mom was not very happy with his efforts, or maybe the ultimate tease to coax him back up to a safer elevation.
Cathy was able to get some of really good photos of Lorne given that he was so low to the ground, enjoy….
A big thank you to Paul from Petra who was able to get me to the upper floors to take a look to the various windows at elevation for what I though was a missing juvenile when I had only two of the three juveniles for most for most of the morning!! Quite stressful when your missing one for hours, always believing the worst has happened, and looking for squashed baby peregrine on the roadway!!
Stay tuned……….
