Another one of our resident adults was tray inspecting today and spending some time at home. O’Connor, resident adult female at the Etobicoke Sun Life nest site, was on her tray for some time this morning taking in the sights and preening the morning away.
This morning many of our adults were feeling the warmer temperatures and doing a little housecleaning. Tiago, who hasn’t been captured on camera but has been in the area, made an appearance at the nest tray today to do a little scraping and a bit of an inspection. Hold on to your hat Tiago as arctic air moves in tonight and the rest of this week is going to be quite frigid!! Nice to see him make an on camera appearance!!
Managed to grab a rare bonding capture from the web cam a few minutes ago. Good to see all is well at Bloor Islington with our falcon pair.
I wanted to post a quick update on several sites that our watchers have reported in on. Peregrine adults were out enjoying the sunshine yesterday as were many of our volunteers and sightings are now pouring in. They include;
Windwhistler and Erin at 18 King
Chessie and Hurricane at William Osler
Peter at Hearn
Jack and O’Connor at Etobicoke Sun Life
MacKensie at the Burlington Lift Bridge
Rhea Mae at Toronto Sheraton Hotel
Haven at Canada Square
Jenna and Chester at ICICI
One adult ( not sure which, too far away ) at Duncan Mill Road
Thanks to all who have been monitoring and thinking about our resident adults through these two storms and checking in on their pairs. With great appreciation we thank Bruce, Sue and Bill, Rob and Angie, Lyn and Linda. Great sightings everyone!
Haven had an early Christmas *pigeon*.
I was just exiting the ATM section of the bank dressed in summer sandals, clothes and a sweater, when I saw her land. She landed on the corner of the CIBC building at the corner of Yonge and Eglinton and had a pigeon in her talons. She rested there for a minute or two and took off across Yonge, west as far as the west side of Rio-Can and about half way up the building. I think her idea was to land on one of the window uprights but this was a bit difficult with a big pigeon in her feet so she flew across Eglinton, over the old TTC bus bays and disappeared. I was outside, in summer garb, and got some funny looks! Anyway I thought she might have gone into one of the balconies, as she was out of sight. She sure fooled me. She had obviously flown between Canada Square and the black building, up Yonge and landed in the same spot she had left!
She rested once more and then began plucking the pigeon. Feathers flew everywhere, like huge snowflakes. Whilst plucking feathers Haven kept a sharp lookout. I did not see Stormin anywhere around. Then she began to eat. She really tucked in non stop for minutes !
After that she had a good look around, shuffled her feathers, had a think and then grabbed the remains of the pigeon and flew again. From the direction she took I think she was aiming for either the north end of Canada Square, which is a favourite butcher block and dining room, or she wanted to stash the remains on the ledge under the nest level. I did not venture out again to verify which it was.
Lyn
A male peregrine was found on the ground in a parking lot in the Scarborough by a resident of the Thorncliff Park area unable to fly and drooping a wing.
The gentleman who found him had to chase him around the parking lot for 40 minutes before he was able to catch him up. I know from experience just how fast a peregrine can run and even hurt they can sometimes make some short low flights in effort to get away from you.
The man brought Stormin home and started calling everyone he could think of to get help for him as soon as possible. After several unsuccessful calls for help he was able to speak to Chris Risley of the Ontario Ministry of Natural resources Peterborough head office who called us right away with the information on an injured Peregrine needing our help and a band number 30 over Y who I knew was Stormin.
I called the man immediately and set up a time to pick Stormin up, despatched Mark Nash of The Canadian Peregrine Foundation to head out to collect what I thought was a very hurt Stormin. Called our Avian vet who was on stand by to help.
We were not able to get to Stormin until after 5:00 PM as the man who had him was out of town so later that day Mark did a quick examination of Stormin’s wings and body and he seemed OK no obvious break, no blood anywhere, very alert and very feisty.
As it turns out there were no serious injuries at all perhaps just a little bruising from a collision or he may have wondered too close to the Don Mills and Eglinton Peregrine nest territory and was put down by one or both of the resident adults ( that are very much still on territory) there. We will never know for sure.
Stormin spent 3 days at the CPF Raptor Center for close 24 hour observation and a little rest and lots of quail and seemed no worse for where. We were able to monitor his flight abilities and he was doing just fine.
While he was with us Bruce Masse and Lyn Thompson long time CPF volunteers went out to check on Haven Stormin’s mate to make sure she was still there and had not been part of whatever trouble Stormin had gotten into. They found her still on site and just fine but did say the she seemed to be looking for Stormin.
Since he checked out fine, was eating food and processing normally and flew up to perches and around in his pen at CPF it was decided to get him back to his nest territory Canada square and his mate Haven right away.
We set a time of 2:30 Today Sunday for his release and called CPF volunteers Lyn Thompson and Mark Thompson ( no they are not related) to meet us there to assist with the release.
Lyn got there before us and set everything up with our friends at Security at the Canada Square building nest site to get us all up to the nest ledge area to release the bird, we were then met by Mark Thompson one of our volunteers and a reporter from CTV and up we went to the nest area on the 15th floor.
Mark Nash extracted him from the rescue carrier looked him over one more time and took him out to the balcony and slowly set him down in the corner and backed away.
Stormin jumped up to the balcony ledge had a poop and a big shake and off he flew very strong hooked around the building out of site. So far so good.
We all trooped back down to ground level and headed out to our cars in the parking area brought out the binoculars and started looking for Stormin to see where he ended up. Within minutes he flew over out heads and landed back on his nest and was met in the air by Haven who obviously was happy to see him back. The both flew over to the TVO building to their usual roosting spots vocalized a bit ( I guess he was explaining his absence) then settled down like nothing had ever happened.
A very BIG thank you goes out for the efforts of the nice man ( who does not want to be mentioned) who rescued Stormin in his time of distress and to Chris from The Ministry of Natural Resources for getting to us right away and lastly but not least to Lyn and Mark for spending their Sunday afternoon on another successful peregrine rescue release.
Mark and Marion Nash
It’s a cool and snowy morning here at Bloor Islington. Something must have been going on at Jack’s other site this past week as O’Connor had been on Moneris holding vigil daily no matter when I checked on her.
Both of them just made an appearence on the nest ledge cam and O’Connor quickly bowed to him and then she took off. Good to see they are both safe and sound!
Yesterday Bruce Massey and I were out in the west end of the city and stopped in at the MEC nest site to check in on Rogue and Sante on a beautiful spring like day. Bruce arrived before I did and located the pair on MEC 2 where they were both roosting the day away. Rogue then flew around to the south side of MEC 2 out of Bruce’s view. I arrived shortly thereafter and drove around to the back parking lot of building 2 and found Rogue in the kitchen/cache that Sante always uses on the south corner of the building. She sat roosting in the sunshine but all the while she was keeping a sharp lookout to the south. She wasn’t there for more than 15 minutes when she took off heading southeast and set up a flock of pigeons that were trying their best to get out of her way. She continued to circle to the south and disappeared behind a building on Mississauga Valley Blvd., one of her favorite hunt sites. Sante remained on the west side of MEC 2 but he was also hyper vigilant watching a few flocks of his own to the northwest. It was great to see the pair together and we look forward to seeing more of them this coming spring.
On Sunday, Marilyn stopped by the Bridge and spotted Voltaire sitting on the nest ledge briefly. Voltaire flew off and reappeared after a few minutes perched on the steeple of Assumption Church.
Today, Dennis and Gwen were in the neighbourhood of the Bridge and reported seeing both Freddie and Voltaire sitting on the east side of the bridge abutment and were busy preening. They were quite vocal as Dennis and Gwen observed them while eating lunch.
The Bridge Company has been doing repairs and painting the abutment. As a result, the nest tray is temporarily removed, but it seems that Freddie and Voltaire are still committed to their nest site.
Marilyn Weller
In all the years I’ve been watching the resident falcons here - I don’t ever remember seeing both adults perched on the web cam at the same time..until this morning. When I came out both were there side by side having a conversation which I quickly came to realize was a ‘you move, no you move - conversation. You can guess who lost that arguement…Jack flew out in a semi circle to the nest box where he is now pouting!
Last Friday I happened to see O’Connor coming in with a ‘duck’ - yes a duck! We’ve seen them up in the cache from time to time but I’ve never actually witnessed either of them bringing one up to the ledge. A co worker and I were out on a break when we noticed a really large bird in the distance flying really low - my first thought was holy cow that’s a huge bird and then she got closer and I realized it was O’Connor with a really large prey in her talons.
She was having a difficult time maintaining altitude but managed to vear off towards the towers and it looked like she was going to slam right into one when suddenly she reared up - honestly it was the most amazing sight ever! Then she proceeded to circle around the building to try and gain height - which she did but she was still about 5 stories short of a ledge.
Jack, who up until then I didn’t even notice as I was focused on O’Connor and quite worried she wouldnt’ make it, was on the ADP sign and dove down as she came around and got under neath her to help guide her upwards. They both flew around the building and I ran through the concourse as no one came back to the front. By the time I got out to the back - there she was on one of the ledges..looking quite proud of herself as she started to prepare - ‘lunch’!
On Sunday we had a powerful wind storm in Toronto - and as a result on Monday I recieved a call from Mark Nash informing me that someone had reported a falcon down on the property. I quickly went to security who took me out to check on the bird and it turned out to be an adult Red Tail, a female judging from the size of her and her talons. She was lying just a few feet from the glass on the ground in a construction area and there were no marks on her. I suspect she likely crashed into the building at high speed due to the wind. As no one saw anything we can’t really say whether or not the resident pair were trying to steer her out but that could have been the case and due to the high winds she would have a hard time controlling herself.