Strong Winds Bring on Amazing Airshow

The high winds that blew through the Downtown canyon on Monday were exploited to the fullest by the falcon family. Astrid and Ares put on an amazing show for the benefit of their young pupils. They dove, swooped, rolled, hovered and executed some maneuvers that words can’t do justice to. A few times they flew in with prey and tried to entice the fledglings to follow them, which admittedly didn’t work too well. Both Comet and Skye seemed to prefer the days when their meals were given to them with no expectations of work. Despite that both fledglings did quite a bit of flying today and they made some great strides. They performed a variety of flight maneuvers and, importantly, got in a lot of practice using their landing gear. Twice, Skye followed his mother as she ascended to high altitudes. Comet circumnavigated the greater downtown canyon, soared back and pulled off a perfect landing on a narrow window ledge of the State Office Building. The fledglings also soared together and did some mid-air sparring. Skye displaced Ares from his perch at least 3 times and Astrid at least once. That was his not-to-subtle way of saying that he was hungry. Today we noticed that the parents have a well stocked pantry. There were 4 birds being stored on high window ledges of the State Building. Interestingly, all of this prey was stored in an identical way – tail out.

Since they rediscovered each other a few days ago, Skye and Comet have been keeping close company – often sharing the same ledge perch. Their sister, Orion is set to return to the canyon at the end of the week. In captivity she has been able to practice flying and landing in a large flight cage; this means she shouldn’t be too far behind the others in acquiring skills. We have every expectation that she will be readily accepted back into the family, just as Tres was last year.