Utica Peregrine Falcon Update for May 3, 2018 –
The day began warm with rain threatening. As it turned out, it did rain, but only very lightly. As the morning progressed the sun occasionally broke through the clouds and the temperatures surged into the 70’s. Light rain fell in the later afternoon and storms threatening in the evening.
Astrid had come back into the box last evening at 5:00. She climbed onto the eggs and stayed there through the night. Ares screeched up to the box with prey at 4:13 Thursday morning. Astrid wasn’t interested in taking the food or leaving the nest, so Ares screeched off back into the darkness. Did he put the food in storage? Low light conditions made it difficult to see Astrid in the box, but we could see a white downy feather that was stuck on the top of her bill. She had been preening a little earlier and that’s how she picked up the beak ornament. Perhaps she will start a trend and soon all the falcons will be wearing them. At 5:22, Ares came to the box again – this time without prey, and the pair switched. At 5:53, Astrid was seen launching off from her steeple perch and heading west. A half-hour later, she was back on the steeple and by the look of her crop, she must have been feeding. Ares saw her fly in and he was excitedly chirping. The falcons switched again at 8:43 and Astrid came back onto the nest. At 9:40, she was standing over the eggs instead of incubating. It was about 70 degrees at that point, so her break-times weren’t jeopardizing the viability of the eggs. Deb heard Ares give a screech at about 10 o’clock but the bird himself was nowhere to be seen. Deb did notice a calling card he left on the State Building. It was prey he had stored on a north face ledge.
At 11:33, Ares came out of nowhere and the pair did a lightning fast switch on the eggs. Following that, Astrid went to the State Building, but wasn’t there for long. Just before noon, Astrid darted off after something and was out of camera view for a while. A half-hour later, a Turkey Vulture flew through the canyon but no one seemed put out by it. Right after the Vulture two very low flying jets tore through the falcon’s airspace! What was that all about? At 1:04, Ares got off the eggs and went out onto the cross-perch. At first we thought “Oh no, here we go again. He’s going to chase off the latest raptor hooligan.” But as it turned out, he didn’t go anywhere; he just stood on the perch for a few minutes and then went back onto the eggs. When Astrid showed up on the State Building at 1:19, we were glad to see her and relieved that she didn’t try to chase down those jets. It’s not that she couldn’t have caught them if she really had wanted to. She returned to the north face of the State Building at 2:50. The falcons switched at the box at around 3:40. Ares went to the State Building and from there he made several hunting forays. At 6:57, Ares left his perch and in little more than a minute, he was on the ledge of Hotel Utica plucking a fresh-caught flicker. He ate nearly the whole thing and then flew off and out of our camera view. It seemed that Ares had no intention of relieving Astrid before nightfall. She seemed to be OK with that, but did have some restless moments in the evening. At one point she was off the eggs and busily digging to China in the corner. Good night falcons!
Friday will be the 30th day since full incubation began, which means that we may see our first pipped egg as early as Saturday or Sunday. Most likely we won’t have a hatch any earlier than Monday. Although, it may be later as a result of the interrupted incubation that occurred at the start of the process.