Banding day at ADM Mills Port Colborne May 30th
May 30, 2020 - Port Colborne - ADM Mill
Marion Nash Reports:
Thanks to the safety support and nest reports from ADM mills staff Eric and Tamara CPF has yet another safe and successful banding completed for 2020.
CPF volunteers Cathy and Mark and ADM staff Eric and Tamara walked up gear and all 7 floors 14 flights of stairs to the nest level and extracted and banded four chicks today while Anne and I stayed on the ground and monitored the adults, tough job lol.
Anne and I watched as the adults took out their anger on a kettle of Turkey vultures who happened to choose the wrong time to float by the nest just as the chicks were being removed for banding. The adults were naturally agitated and in full protection mode. They both took off after the vultures separating and scattering the group. The male dove and struck at least two of them pushing all but one of group off to my right away from the nest while the female struck the other one who was now directly over the nest knocking it out of the sky and down to the roof top of the nest structure. I watched to see if the vulture would recover and saw wing flaps a couple times but nothing more from it so either it flew off the back of the roof out of my sight line, decided to just lay low until she settled down or had succumbed to injury, lesson learned for the turkey vultures 
There were so many bird species flying around and over the mill property so it was great to see that the food source for this family is quite varied and plentiful.
There were two females and two males all very healthy the youngest is 16 days and so cute Mark called him a pocket bird, to those who have ever seen these chicks up close you know what the means lol. The oldest is 22 days old. There are only 2 sites who produced 4 chicks this year this is one of those sites most have at least 1 unhatched egg.
Here is the banding information and names of each chick.
Female 570 grams 18 days old band Z over 51 named Nancy
Female 670 grams 19 days old band Z over 50 named Iris
Male 541 grams 22 days old band 19 over AW named Rufus
Male 440 grams 16 days old band 20 over AW named Mac
Tamara promised to keep us up to date on how the family is doing going forward and Eric said they would be happy to do a more formal banding to allow more staff to be invited next year if or when COVID-19 is no longer a threat.
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