Utica Peregrine Falcons Update for Friday, April 14th, 2023
It cooled down a little overnight. The low temperature was in the high forties. The temperature shot up after daybreak and was in the mid 80’s by midday. My streaming video was out between 2 AM – 4 AM, but we don’t think we missed any action. Astrid appeared to be on the eggs all night long. Ares came to the box and relieved her at 6:06. She seemed eager to go. At 6:17 Astrid was feeding on the hotel ledge. We think she took something from one of Ares’ pantry ledges. She didn’t feed for long and was on the steeple only a few minutes later. At 6:46 she came back to the nest, and they executed a quick switch. At 7:39 Ares brought prey to the long perch. Astrid accepted it on the crossperch, but we couldn’t find where she took it. At 7:52 she was back to the crossperch – probably because Deb had come into her office. However, she didn’t appear to be overly upset. A few minutes later they switched. Astrid was very nice about it. She beaked with Ares and used the gentlest persuasion. Ares was on the State Building for a while after that. At 9:05 when he flew out, Astrid vocalized.
At 10:48 Ares was on the steeple perch. At 11:14 Ares came to the box, walked around Astrid and forced her to stand. She took the cue to leave. At 12:02 PM, Ares started giving cackle-type alarm calls from the box. He flew from the nest and went to his lookout post. Meanwhile Astrid was still on the steeple. Two minutes later she flew to the box and got onto the eggs. At 12:34 it was Ares turn to be on the steeple. At around 2:40 the falcons switched and Ares came on duty for the hottest part of the day. He ended up pulling a very long shift – most of which he spent shading the eggs. We didn’t know where Astrid was off to for a while and then at 3:32 she showed up on the State Building. She remained there until 5:24. At 5:51 PM Ares jumped ship. Whether he was fed up with being in the sun or if some intruder got his dander up, we didn’t know, Astrid came back into the box and took over on the eggs only two minutes later. She seemed to be in her place for the night. Goodnight falcons