Thursday, June 4 – Fledgewatch is Starting and the Falcons Need Your Help!

Astrid spent the first part of the night guarding the nest but then was out of view for quite a while. Ares brought food to the box at 1:35 AM. While standing on the lip of the box he handed it to Xena. At 3:15 Ares brought more prey to the box. After perching on the crossperch for a few minutes he jumped into the box and began feeding the nestlings. That was interesting, given that he has shown little interest in doing any feeding in the past week due to the rambunctiousness of the young. As it happened, after serving the chicks a few morsels, he let them have it. At 6:27 Ares brought food to the nest again. This time Astrid took it and fed the young. When the meal was over, she picked up a scrap of food from the floor and tried to feed that out as well, but no one was interested. It was extremely foggy downtown in the early morning – so foggy that we couldn’t see the State Building with the PTZ cam.
By 8:16 the fog had lifted. Astrid brought food to the box and tried to do a feeding. She had a tug-o-war with Xena. The upstart won and took the food to the corner and began picking at it. Zeus complained about being left out. At 11:05 one of the nestlings was heard practicing a cackle-type alarm call. At noon Ares was on the hotel ledge. He was sunning himself but he was also hunting; he was watching for potential prey traversing the canyon. That’s what we call falcon multitasking. At around 12:30 Astrid was giving cackle alarm calls. She was upset about something – possibly the construction that’s happening on the apartment building across the street. Or maybe it’s the work taking place on the State Building that got her all riled up. They have been swapping out all the windows on that building – floor by floor. They are currently working low on the building, but Astrid is keeping an eye on them. The nestlings did a lot of exercising in the early afternoon – lots of wing flapping, stomping and dashing around in the box.
At 1:45 Ares brought a cuckoo to the nest. He took it onto the floor and began to feed the chicks himself. Astrid was flying around the State Building at the time and seemed to have no interest in taking over from him. Indeed, Ares was keen to try. As it happened, he didn’t get far into the meal before Zeus stole it away and took it to the corner. After leaving the nest Ares made a close pass by the PTZ camera, giving us a nice action shot. At just before 2 PM both parents were perched on adjacent ledges on the State Building. Ten minutes later Astrid was at the nest trying to feed a cuckoo to Zeus. It was the meal that Ares had brought just a short time before. Interestingly, Astrid seems to have no issue about feeding cuckoos to the chicks this year. Long-time watchers of the Utica Peregrines may recall her opinion of cuckoo flesh in previous years. She didn’t like it and would even send Ares away when he brought a cuckoo to her. A few minutes into the feeding, Xena snatched back the rest of the cuckoo and took it to the corner. At 2:14 Astrid was irritated by something in the canyon again – perhaps someone came too close to a nearby window. The box became quite warm in the late afternoon and the nestlings crammed themselves into the corners to find shade. As for the parents, they are not in the shade-providing business anymore. Astrid was on the long perch at 2:48 and Zeus was tearing up the place and making loose feathers in the box fly. That was happening pretty much whenever a parent would visit the box – one or both nestlings would go wild.
At 7:39 Zeus backed up onto the lip of the box, flapped his wings and jumped back into the box. A minute later, Xena stepped forward onto the box’s edge. Yikes! Good thing fledgewatch is about to start. At 8:46 Astrid brought prey to the nest. Xena grabbed it from her. Zeus tried to snatch it from his sister, but she prevailed. Just then Astrid became irritated and gave some cackle calls. We didn’t know what the issue was. By 9 Pm she was calm and at her guard post on the long perch. Ares was on the north face of the State Building. Goodnight falcons.