William Osler Chicks Get Spoiled Rotten.
June 21, 2015 - Etobicoke - William Osler
Tracy Simpson Reports:
Yesterday after Bruce and Rob arrived at the Islington and Bloor nest site, I left the watch in their capable hands and headed up here to William Osler to check in on the family for a few hours. My initial task was to locate all of the chicks which is like trying to find a green smartie in the grass. Hurricane and Chessie always have such handsomely dark chicks that match the color of the louvres quite nicely. It didn’t take long to find them as Chessie flew in with a massive pigeon and they were on their feet cheering her on. She flew into the ledge and spent the next 40 minutes beak feeding each chick that only stopped howling their excitement long enough to swallow. Two chicks then galloped down to the south H sign and pancaked out for a few hours leaving the other two lots of room in the nest tray for napping. Hurricane and Chessie also took the next few hours to nap in the tower which had me in my vehicle dozing a bit myself. All 7 of us had a good wee sleep and by noon Hurricane took off west. About 20 minutes later he came flapping in like mad with… …oh no… …NOT ANOTHER PIGEON??!! Yup. Chessie took the pigeon lunch onto the ledge and beak fed again. More pancaking followed and one chick was in such a food stupor that it leaned against a pillar and fell asleep standing up and screaming. Back to the tower for the parents and let nap number two commence. The third pigeon arrived around 4pm and now one of the chicks was screaming and running AWAY from the feeding scramble totally disinterested but screaming anyways ’cause everybody else was. Goodness gracious. By 530pm we were all zonked out again and Bruce was calling with a low bird report. I left my cell number with security just in case one of these two tonners came down and I headed down to Islington and Bloor to back up Bruce. On my way back north I stopped in for a head count and all four chicks crops could easily be seen from the Moon as they had recently been fed yet again. Sunday I will be spending the day once again checking in on how close we are to the start of the full watch.