April 2nd - 2015
A big thank you to Roger Leekam for sharing some his photos with us of the pair on the nest lest ledge in the middle of a food drop.
O’Connor has laid her second egg under the cover of darkness. This morning there are two eggs in the nestbox!
March 30 – Fraser was at the KCI parking lot at 8:25 and initially no peregrines were present on the CTV Bell Media tower. Just as Fraser was leaving, one flew in and landed on the box and within seconds the second peregrine arrived and perched on the tower. The first bird disappeared inside the box while the other remained on the tower. The birds were still there when Fraser left around 10 minutes later. At 5:30, Lisa was watching and saw one of the peregrines sitting on the balcony of the nest box. After about 15 minutes, the other grine flew into the nest box and both went inside. One flew out right away and cirlcled around to the media tower onto King’s Towers on the platform under the top drum and kept a watchful eye on the nest box calling from time to time. The other grine stayed inside the nest box for the rest of the time until Lisa left the watch at about 6:15.
On Friday, April 2, Dale was down at CTV and watched the live feed from the nest webcam. Mystery was hunkered down on the eggs and she has laid a third egg! Caster was off hunting from 12:30 to 1:30. Dale also observed with binoculars from the KW Hospital parking garage, Mystery in the nest box, not quite at eye level but still clearly in sight. Later on at around 4:00, Janice observed Mystery at the Sun Life tower having an early supper eating a fairly large bird. Full time incubation has not quite started yet judging by this observation.
On April 5, a post on the CTV News showed that there has been a fourth egg laid in the nest box sometime on Saturday, April 4! Full time incubation should be starting shortly! For video clips posted on the CTV site, copy the url below and search for “peregrine falcon” and all posted video clips will be listed.
http://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/video
It appears the Hunter and Seven are setting up house keeping on the east ledge of the hospital. Very consistent courtship behaviour observed, with copulation and a ‘hand- off” of the “nest’ area. They could be in the early stages of egg production, as they are paying attention to one particular ledge. Unable to confirm the presence of eggs, as this is a difficult area to get a sight line into the ledge itself. Observations will continue for behavioural changes in the adults to indicate full time incubation of eggs. Exciting, as this would be the first nest for the female Seven.
Yesterday Bruce Massey visited the Canada Square nest site to check in on Haven and her mate. After checking in with building management he headed upstairs to check for the presence of eggs. The first egg has not arrived yet but the adults are definitely working on a scrape. Bruce did positively identify the unbanded adult female known as Haven but has yet to confirm whether the male is still Malik. We will continue to try and confirm the ID of the male and watch for the arrival of the first egg.
Yesterday Rob and I met up at the William Osler nest site to check on Chessie and were pleased to find that Hurricane has returned from migration. He was sitting in the hydro tower just east of the nest ledge calling softly to her which drew her in to the territory. At one point both adults were in the tower enjoying the day and talking back and forth to one another. There were a lot of back and forth visits to the nest tray that ended with Chessie front and centre in the tower. Hurricane then pulled off a spectacular flight around the girders of the tower to fly in for copulation before going on a lunch run. Welcome home Hurricane! I will be back to check for the first egg very soon.
Yesterday Bruce Massey was out at the Yellow Pages nest site and found both of the adults at home… …with company. A third bird, identified as a female, briefly entered the territory and was fully escorted out by the pair. The resident adults quickly returned and copulated on the nest building cementing their bond and intent. Although Bruce was unable to confirm band numbers yesterday he was able to see that the female was wearing a black over green recovery band with a silver USFW which is consistent with Linn. He will continue to work on confirming identities this week.
For the past week Bruce Massey and I have been visiting the Amexon site to determine what the pair have been up to. We were able to confirm the identity of both adults; the unbanded female named Jenna and the banded male named Chester who is solid black 95 over Y (Canada Square hatch from 2011).
Both adults have been focusing all of their attention on the north facing ledge of the DeBeers building at 250 Ferrand with only one bird in view at a time. One bird in… …other bird out. The bird that enters this ledge then disappears to the back and remains there until relieved by the other. This behaviour was observed on Monday March 30th and we believe that they are possibly fully incubating a clutch. Last year the pair used this building but were nesting on the east facing ledge. This season they seemed to have changed things up and are trying something new.
Laid overnight under the cover of darkness! This morning there is an egg in the nest tray!
On March 23rd I snapped a shot of 2 eggs in the box and another shot today still only 2 eggs
Happy Easter
