!!! 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!
Fatal error: Call to undefined function post_gallery_get_images() in /var/www/html/w/wp-content/themes/cpf200903/index.php on line 29