Utica Peregrine Falcon Update for April 18, 2018 –
Wednesday started out chilly and with snow flurries. There was even some snow accumulation in the hills. Wind was constant but not too strong by modern standards. Temperatures remained mostly in the thirties, but breached 40, by mid-afternoon. Astrid came onto the nest at 4:40, Tuesday night. She remained through the night, which is typical. Ares finally relieved her at 6:00 AM on Wednesday. He had showed up on the State Building only a few minutes earlier. Upon being relieved, Astrid flew over to the State Building and was seen flying around the west and north faces of the building. Most likely she was searching Ares’ pantry and looking for stored food. While she was doing this, Ares watched her and made lots of chirping vocalizations. At 8:47, Astrid came to the box and resumed incubating. She seemed to be licking her beak a bit, which is something we don’t often see her do. A little while later she was moving stones around. There’s not much to do when you’re incubating. Meanwhile Ares was coming and going from the State Building – presumably he was hunting. The falcons switched again at 12:27. It was another quick changeover, which is appropriate giving the cold temperatures. Astrid took a relatively low perch on the State Building and then got into some heavy preening. After that she did some nice flybys in the canyon before landed back on the State Building.
At 2:37, the falcons did another one of their rapid switch-outs. Astrid took over on the eggs and Ares took the opportunity to do some fancy flying on the wind. For the next two hours he was in and out of camera view several times. Astrid was getting a little cagey after 5 PM, and seemed to want Ares to take another shift, but he wasn’t taking the cues. At 5:30, when Ares flew through again, Astrid really began chirping a lot. Still, he wasn’t heeding her calls. We thought she was set to pull another marathon sitting, but then at 6:37, she just left the nest. Ares arrived two minutes later and covered the eggs. Astrid then stayed out of view until 8:03, when she made a brief check in at the box. Five minutes later, she came and took over incubation. We are not sure why she left earlier. We don’t think it was because of an intruder. She may have just been hungry. She was not seen eating today and, as far as we know, Ares didn’t bring her anything. Regardless, she was settled on the eggs and Ares went off to a night perch at some undisclosed location.
