Astrid and Ares were both visible on the State Building for a while in the late evening. Ares brought prey to the nest at 12:24 (only an hour after the prior meal). Xena took the food from Ares and dragged it into the corner, while Astrid stayed on the west veranda and did not get involved. Ares didn’t try to get it back. At 12:15 Astrid was flying through the canyon on a northward heading. We assume she was doing some late-night hunting. At 12:56 Ares brought more food to the box. It was small and he passed it to one of the nestlings. There was no appreciable activity at the nest between then and 6:22 when Ares brought breakfast. Astrid fed the chicks for twenty minutes or until they could not take anymore. At 6:42 AM Astrid was upset about something – perhaps workmen on the building across the street or someone near an office window on the nest building. At one point Astrid flew over the State Building, suddenly rising like she was on an escalator – sliding up on the air and then darting over to the north. She returned to perch on the State Building. Ten minutes later she was giving cackle-type alarm calls. We didn’t see any raptor or obvious threat with our PTZ cam.
At 8:50 we heard Ares screech up to the box. He was doing a routine chick-check. At the time Astrid was on the west veranda giving a dirty look at the adjacent office window. Meanwhile, the nestlings were very active in the box – vocalizing and wing-flapping. At 10:05 it sounded like the parents converged at the box and maybe did a food transfer. But if that was the case, where did they go and what happened to the food? After that, Astrid went back and forth to the box several times. We weren’t sure what that was about either. At 11:21 there was a person on the roof of the State Building. We didn’t know where Astrid was at the time, but Ares was on a high ledge on the North face of the State Building. He did not react, even when the person was looking over the edge and only about fifteen feet away from Ares’ position. At 11:27 Astrid appeared on the west veranda again.
The nestlings went through the afternoon without any feedings. Periodically they held little protests – sometimes whipping themselves into a frenzy. Both parents did fairly frequent check-ins, but no food came into the box. Whenever Astrid or Ares did come to the nest, the chicks went wild – squealing, screeching, and lunging around the box. At 3:04 we heard one of the parents give a cackle alarm call, but all was calm directly afterwards, so the cause was likely a passing raptor. In the late afternoon Astrid was doing an increasing amount of chick-checks. She was also sailing around the canyon a lot and sometimes passing by our roof-mounted PTZ camera. At 6:37 Ares finally brought food to the box. Astrid took it from him on the east veranda. She hopped into the box with it and became immediately enmeshed in a tug-o-war with Xena and Zeus. They soon relented and allowed their mother to feed them the old-fashioned way. At 6:48 Zeus backed up to the edge of the box and in doing so he stepped up onto the box’s lip. He then jumped back into the box like super-bird.
At 8:14 PM Astrid began giving cackle-type alarm calls. She did some swooping in front of the bank building and then landed on a lower steeple perch. She was cackling and appeared to be looking at something, possibly low and to the north towards the bank. We saw nothing. Ares was back and he took a perch on the upper steeple. He was giving long calls while she continued to cackle. As for Xena and Zeus, they quieted down and just watched their parents from the box. Astrid seemed to calm down a bit, but then, at 8:45 she was cackling again. A little while later she normalized and flew up to the long perch. That’s where she spent the rest of the evening. Ares was mostly out of view. Goodnight falcons.
