Canadian Peregrine Foundation

Today at MEC. Lost and Found, Fledged and Wedged

June 06, 2015 - Mississauga - Executive Centre

Tracy Simpson Reports:

Today was an up and down day for us watchers and it has closed on an all around good note.

My plan was to be at MEC as early as possible to catch the dawn activity of Adrianna and Ieva who were still on the ledge and Hawkeye who flew yesterday, was rescued and released to the rooftop last night.  Best laid plans went awry when I fell asleep sitting up last night after hitting the publish button and ran down my cell phone battery which disabled my alarm clock.  I woke up at 6:30am and realized that it was very light out and dashed out the door quick!  I received a text from Katherine who was a few minutes away from arriving at MEC and explained that I was frantically driving hopefully in the right direction.  When Katherine arrived at MEC she texted me which birds she had in sight…  …NONE!!  No chicks.  No parents.  Not a peep, flap, scream…   …NOTHING.  Great.  My speed of driving increased exponentially with my stress level while Katherine began the search.  One by one the two girls still on the ledge began to appear.  They were down in the window well and may have just been fed there so they were slow to show themselves.  A few minutes later the first adult appeared.  Another 10 minutes went by and the second had now shown up.  I pulled in at 7:30am and we now had two chicks still on the nest ledge and two adults in view.  OK.  Now….   …Hawkeye.  Where was she?  Had she popped up yet from the roof?  No.  Did the parents go over and visit?  No.

Shannon arrived and joined Katherine and I at MEC 3.  Both of the adults were focused on the creek valley between MEC 1 and MEC 3 and were honing in on an area near the creek on the MEC 3 side.  We searched the creek area and the base of all four buildings and then went back to 3 where we waited for a sign from the parents or a pop up on the roof by Hawkeye.  More nothing.

The rest of the morning we spent making forays out to check areas for Hawkeye around MEC 3 and MEC 1 to no avail.  What was driving this search was that the parents were both fixated on the creek valley and when they brought food in for the girls, they made no move to investigate the roof of MEC 1 or take any food there.  On the off chance that Hawkeye had flown just after dawn, we continued to check throughout the day.  Bruce arrived around noon and took over for Shannon and Katherine and helped to spot check and search.  By 1pm I decided to go up and check the cooling tower pit at MEC 1 just in case Hawkeye had gone down in as fledglings will sometimes do.  This is an easy check through a man door off of the mechanical room and is 16 feet below the roof line.  Once they flutter in they can’t get back out.  No Hawkeye.  Ugh.

Back out at MEC 3 Bruce and I had not seen nor heard Hawkeye at all, she made no appearances on the retaining wall of the roof and the adults only once went over to the MEC 1 retaining wall and showed no interest in anything on it; it was merely a vantage point.  I left at 2pm for work and Bruce continued the vigil at the site.

By 5pm both Adrianna and Ieva were now jumping the gaps and chasing the parents across the face of MEC 1.  Their jumps were controlled and well executed until…  …oops!  Ieva slipped on one of her landings and was in the air headed for Hurontario and its 6 lanes of traffic!  She circled back and tried for a landing at 3 but was too low to make it stick.  She flumped against a window and fluttered down to the crotch of a big tree.  Bruce circled around to the back of MEC 3 and found Ieva fairly quickly as Midnight was sitting on a light post nearby the tree where she sat.   Bruce repositioned and Winston had now arrived and suddenly my phone rang.  Bruce.  Uh oh.  He gleefully said hello and asked if I was sitting down.  ???  He had 5 birds now in view.  ???  It would seem that Hawkeye had NEVER LEFT THE ROOF AT ALL!!!  Here she was now sitting on top of the retaining wall and Midnight went over to visit her missing-found-never-lost-in-the-first-place-daughter.  Huh.  Midnight and Renegade were equally as surprised as we were to find Hawkeye now up and screaming on the roof edge and we figured that their fixation on the creek was due to it being the general area from which they last saw her go before she was rescued.  She most likely spent the day napping away on the roof in the shade beyond the view of all of us.  Brat.

Bruce and Winston closed out the watch with Hawkeye on the roof, Adrianna on the ledge and Ieva wedged in a tree.  I am going to have an exciting morning for sure!!  To the air we go!!

Thank you to Shannon, Katherine, Bruce and Winston for your marathon efforts today.  Oh what a day it was.

!!! Toronto Rogers Centre Update - 3 hatchlings observed!! Heads-Up,, Look out, they’re almost ready to take their first flights!!!

June 06, 2015 - Toronto - Rogers Centre

Mark Nash Reports:

Saturday June 6th - 2015
A big thank you to Linda Woods who was able to get down to the Toronto Rogers Center again this afternoon and was able to positively confirm that three hatchlings have in fact been produced at the Toronto Rogers Centre this season!

As we had suspected as a result of seeing only one adult at any given time over the past month, (and seeing both the adult male and adult female on sight), along with shift changes having been observed taking place from the original ledge that the resident peregrines nested on two years ago (south east ledge), we knew that they were involved in full time incubation activities, BUT we can now confirm that the pair have in fact been successful again this year having produced at least three young!

Based on Linda’s observations, she seeing two larger juveniles and one smaller, (believed to be two females and one male).

Now the not so good news,,, in that they are well advanced in their age, with the two larger juveniles almost fully feathered with only a very little white down. The third much smaller (and younger) juvenile still has 10% down and is likely three to five days away from fledging.

The other two juveniles are only days away from taking their first flights!!! Yikes!!!

Sadly, we didn’t get the new wireless camera in time this year to be able to get it down to the Rogers Center to do a ledge survey, but baring in mind, each of the ledges have a very deep drainage trough that runs down the center of the entire length of the ledge, and there would have been no way that we could have gotten the camera back into the depth of the ledge to see anything down into the trough itself.

It as quite apparent after spending some time with the roofers last year on their swing stage on the west side while installing the new nest tray for the resident adults that only an advanced much older hatchling could actually make it out of the drainage trough up to the ledge where they could actually be seen.

While the new wireless camera has proved to be a very useful and valuable asset for us to do high altitude ledge surveys, remember that its still only attached to a very flexible cable that must be lowered down to the ledge from the upper roof areas, and once there, it can only rest (if we’re lucky) on the outer lip of the ledge. Because the cable is flush to the outer structure wall, we have no way of getting the camera further into the ledge, (let alone of angling it to look “down” into something like this drainage trough), and as such it has its limitations if there is a lower elevation back within the ledge itself.

In any case, it appears that we will have birds fledging from the Rogers Centre within the next 2 to 5 days!!!

The photos attached were taken of the same ledge on the west side. You can see the deep drainage trough that runs along the inside length of the ledge. All of the ledges on both the west and east side are carbon copies of one another.

Looking for any and all support at this site to help out with a fledge watch! As usual, we’re typically over stressed for manpower and resources at this time of year to cover all of the on-going fledge watches, and this one has just come at us from left field - (no pun intended).

Help us help your peregrines!

MEC First Fledge Back Home Tonight

June 05, 2015 - Mississauga - Executive Centre

Tracy Simpson Reports:

What a day today!  This morning there was again lots of teasing by both resident adults in the hopes that one of the triplets would fledge but this morning they were content to stay home.  By 8am Renegade had come in with a small bird for breakfast and that set off quite a spit spat.  The food came in to an awaiting Ieva who took it from Renegade with quite a yank.  Adrianna now came up out of the window well and was furious there was none for her so she scrambled across the ledge screaming her head off all the way over to her sister…   …whom she then punched in the face.  Yes folks, Adrianna punched Ieva in the face with the wrist of her wing.  It had the desired effect in that Ieva immediately dropped the food which Adrianna happily scooped up and ate the whole thing herself.  That set the tone of the day between these two girls when it came to food.

After the 8am feed there was a lot of flapping which was sustained and coordinated, looking rather good in fact.  By 9am they had all retired to the window well for napping and preening to round out the morning.  For the next three hours I was ledge watching, not fledge watching, as the three remained out of sight.  By noon they had popped up and were looking for food so activity really picked up.  Bruce arrived at 2pm and we watched Ieva finally exact her revenge on Adrianna for the face punch by jumping up on her back…  …twice.  Right square on top of her sister and riding her like a horse.  Yeesh.

I left Bruce as the weather was rolling in and he had to finally take some serious shelter under the overhang at MEC 3.  At one point he lost sight of the nest building all together as the rain pelted down heavily and steadily.  When the rain let up he was able to get a head count on all three girls and then as he was changing his position Midnight took to the air with what seemed like real urgency.  She circled low over the trees on the west side of MEC 3 and Bruce now had only two in view on the nest ledge.  He began his search of the area while Midnight watched from the top northwest corner of building 3.  Bruce did find our little flyer on the west side right where Midnight had been circling and scooped up wee Hawkeye with blue tape.  He placed her in a carrier and it was off to MEC 1 to await an exam and release.  She is one hissy little such and such!!  Lashing out with her talons, biting and charging the carrier door was all she could think about as we checked her out and cleared her for release.  She was released tonight to the roof of the nest building to try again tomorrow.   Looking forward to it!!

!!! William Osler Health Care Centre Banding Day Success! 3 males and one female!

June 05, 2015 - Etobicoke - William Osler

CPF Postmaster Reports:

June 5th - 2015
Banding Day!strong>
A big thank you to Ross and the William Osler Hospital for hosting the banding today, as it was a very successful morning indeed! All four young hatchlings were banded this morning and returned safely back their parents in record time and everything went without a hitch!

William Osler writes:
It was a pleasure to be a part of the banding process today. After receiving over 80 submissions from our staff over the past week, we have decided on the names: Benny, Winston, Sven, and Peggy. We hope you like them as much as we do!

All four hatchlings checked out very healthy with the typical feisty peregrine attitudes that we are looking to see.

Their particulars are as follows:
1st - A male named Benny - 580 grams - Banded Black Y over 14 with Green Tape
2nd - A female named Peggy - 795 grams - Banded Black Y over 96 with Red tape
3rd - A male named Winston - 606 grams - Banded Black Y over 15 with White Tape
4th - A male named Sven - 530 grams - Banded Black Y over 16 with Yellow Tape

Both resident adults were on hand to voice their dissatisfaction with or efforts, but waited patiently for their hatchlings return.

You can see some of the video footage taken with the CPF wireless colour camera that was recorded throughout the event on our YouTube page at:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSHlNQ5LCbkTPps432yxEaQ

Posted on June 5, 2015 11:41 pm

Observation for Etobicoke - William Osler

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