Slim Pickings During the Night Shift & Growing Chicks Develop Their Face Masks

While the previous night was replete with feedings, last night couldn’t have been more different. In fact, only a single feeding took place. Ares came to the box with a small item of prey at 3:30 AM; he waited on the perch for Astrid for few minutes, and when she didn’t show up, he went ahead and fed the nestlings himself. Astrid was at the box on and off all night, but was nowhere to be seen when Ares called for her. It does seem to be an accepted fact now that Ares does some nighttime feedings. Why he’s doing it this year when he didn’t do it the previous three years is open to conjecture. Perhaps having four chicks to feed tips the balance and triggers this extra participation by the male. It was windy and chilly again today with high temps only reaching into the 50s. Rain threatened for most of the day, but little fell. Additional morning feedings took place at 6:24, 7:16, 9:32 and 11:58. All morning meals were delivered by Ares and featured Astrid doing the feeding. Also, the meals were all relatively small. After the 9:30 AM feeding, the nestlings were heard giving their begging calls. These calls are certainly increasing in decibels as the youngsters grow. The chicks did a bit more walking around and wing flapping in the box today, but they also spent a fair amount of time huddled up against the west wall of the box. Their eye masks are more distinct today and the feather sheathes in their wings and tails are becoming more apparent. At one point I saw one of the chicks make a grab (with its bill) for prey before Astrid had even plucked it. It wasn’t a serious attempt to steal the prey. No, we probably won’t see that behavior for another couple of weeks, but that’s hard to say decisively given the rate these guys are growing. At 12:45, Astrid was definitely in hunting mode. We saw her dash around the State Building and make an “S” pattern around the church steeple and the ADK Bank. She was moving very fast – aided by the wind gusts through the canyon. The first feeding of the afternoon took place at 2:22. At 3:13, Astrid brought in what appeared to be the remains of a pigeon (highly processed) and she conducted a feeding. Although the parents were spending very little time at the box today, for the most part they did remain in the canyon and in view of our PTZ camera. At 4 o’clock, Ares arrived at the box with food. This time he went right to the middle of the box and began feeding the one chick already in the center of the floor. The other three seemed content to stay against the west wall. Five minutes later, Astrid came in, took the food from Ares and commenced a proper feeding. She didn’t get far though; two minutes later something spooked her and made her leap out of the box with the meal. She must’ve been irritated by some movement in the office windows, because both her and Ares swooped and hovered in front of them. There defensive action didn’t last for long, but they didn’t resume with the feeding. Instead they zipped off toward the west of the canyon. At 6:30 PM, Ares snuck into the box with prey and began to feed. He got about five minutes into it before Astrid arrived and took over. At 7:20, we found Ares plucking prey on the hotel ledge. He had apparently caught a pigeon, which was interesting since it’s usually Astrid that specializes in taking pigeons. After he finished plucking and also partaking of some himself, he brought it over to the nest box. This time Astrid came over immediately. She took the meal and stored it back on the hotel. Perhaps it will be brought to the nest during the overnight session.