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.