MEC Female Identified.
July 31, 2014 - Mississauga - Executive Centre
Tracy Simpson Reports:
A big thank you to Lucie that yesterday was able to confirm what we suspected in that the female seen on camera at MEC is Midnght from the downtown Brampton nest site.
A few days ago we were watching vigorous activity in the nest box with the adults in and out regularly and doing more than simple fall bonding. The nest scrapes were being seriously excavated along with lots of bowing that looked more like courtship than housecleaning. Over the past few days we were able to confirm that there is indeed a new bird at the MEC site and that bonding of this new pairing was in high swing. Thanks to our web camera watchers we were able to confirm band colors as black over red on the left leg and purple USFW on the right of this new female. During Lucie’s visit to the site yesterday she was able to 100% clearly see through her scope the 9 on top with a 90% certainty of an 8 beside it and 100% confirm an E on the bottom. This is consistent with Midnight, hatched in 2011 in Ohio, whose band is black 98 over red E.
Midnight was identified in Ontario as a subadult in 2012 when I found her hanging around in downtown Brampton with Milton, then resident male at the Brampton Courthouse. Nothing came of that nesting season but by 2013 she was ready to give nesting a try. The spring started late for her in downtown Brampton as her mate Milton was ousted by a younger Canadian male named Striker from the Yellow Pages nest site, also hatched in 2011. The eggs laid were Milton’s but the new male attending to her had changed. Her attempt to nest on the George St. condo failed to hatch any young. By August, Midnight had come south down Hwy. 10 to the Brittania Road area chasing out a subadult female named Alfrieda (now nesting at Lakeridge Hospital in Oshawa) and spent over a month courting Ossie, a subadult male hatched at the William Osler Hospital in 2012. By the winter of 2013, Midnight was back further north and Ossie was no longer around the Revenue Canada building.
This spring, Midnight was once again in downtown Brampton with Striker and they were working on hatching young on the top of the George St condo. Territorial battles with other females, intense rainfall events, lack of substrate and drainage and lingering cold most likely all played a role in her second nest failure in two years. When we heard that a black over red banded female was now in the MEC box and on camera, we immediately thought of her.
Up to this point, this territory has been held by Rogue who successfully hatched and raised one male chick this year. Where Rogue is at this time no one really knows but we will certainly be watching for her. Only time will tell who will be the breeding adult female next year at MEC as there is still a long way to go before we get there. We will be out over the long weekend to check in on Midnight and Renegade as well as head north to look for Striker and Rogue. We will keep you up to date on all the latest news regarding this site so keep checking back.
Photos / web cam captures to follow.
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