The overnight was chilly but during the day the temperature surged into the mid-70’s. Astrid remained on the nest through the night. Ares arrived to relive her sometimes between 5:00 AM and 5:15. Forty minutes later Astrid landed on the steeple and Ares gave some squeaking calls to acknowledge her move. The next switch happed at around 6:50 and this time Astrid was taking over incubation. At 8:37 Astrid called out, inadvertently drawing our attention to the fact that her mate had taken a perch on the State Building. At 9:51 Ares brought prey to the long perch. Astrid scrambled over the crossperch to get and then flew off into the canyon. We thought she would go to the hotel right away, but she didn’t show up there until two minutes later. I guess she took the scenic route. At 10:02 she was finished with her meal, and she flew to the steeple. At 11:14 Astrid came to the box and asked to take over incubation, but Ares didn’t want to leave. She let him have some more time. At 11:44 Astrid returned and this time they did switch. At 12:55 PM, Ares was giving long calls from somewhere in the canyon. Astrid called back from the nest. As the temperature came up into the mid-seventies during the afternoon, Astrid began panting, but she continued incubating; we didn’t see her switch to shading the eggs. At 3:32 she did some vocalizing. We thought maybe she was calling Ares over to switch, but when he showed up at 3:51 she showed no inclination to give up incubating. Ares stood inside the box with her for about eight minutes. He wasn’t being pushy about taking over, he was just standing next to her. He probably expected that since it was getting increasingly warm in the box that Astrid would want to leave, but she didn’t. Finally, he took his exit. He was back at 4:42 and this time Astrid had no problem ceded the nest to him. While in the box he mostly incubated but he also did some shading. Like Astrid had done before him, he was panting a bit. At 4:51 he started calling out excitedly from the nest. Apparently, there was an intruder active in the canyon. Astrid was probably dealing with it, although we had no visual to confirm what was occurring. He calmed down after a while, having never left the eggs. Astrid was back on the State Building at 5:16. She was up and down at least once in the subsequent hour. The last switch of the day occurred at 8:15 PM. Astrid climbed onto the eggs and looked to be in place for the night. Goodnight all.
Little Falls Falcon Update – As of early Sunday morning the pipped egg in the Little Falls nest still hadn’t opened completely. We still have hope that all is OK with it, and we will put out another update tomorrow.
