Utica Peregrine Falcons Update for Tuesday, April 18th, 2023
It was cool and rainy overnight. The temperature was in the high 30s. Conditions did not change much during the day. The high temperature was only 43 degrees and there were intermittent rain showers. Astrid spent the night on the eggs. Ares showed up on the State Building just before 6 AM. He moved from a ledge to his lookout post at one point. At around 6:10 he came to the box and the pair did a quick switch. She went over to the State Building while he worked to cover all four eggs. At 6:46 Astrid was on the steeple. She wasn’t there for long and soon went somewhere invisible to our cameras. At 7:24 she was back to the State Building. Ten minutes later she landed on the crossperch at the nestbox. She quickly discerned that Ares was not ready to go and she flew off once more. At 9:11 Astrid was back, and this time Ares did allow her to take over on the nest. When he left he headed to the exact same ledge on the State Building that Astrid had been on. At 9:30 Astrid began calling from the box. Ares was dealing with an intruder. Both Falcons headed off towards the north with Ares in pursuit. Ares returned only a minute later and landed on the lookout post. He moved to a window ledge after a couple of minutes. At 10:30 Astrid was calling again. We don’t know what brought that on. Perhaps the intruder had returned. At 11:37 Ares was on the State Building again. Ten minutes later he came into the box to try to have a turn incubating. Astrid did not want to leave. There was a lot of conversation, but she opted to stay and flew out. He floated back over to the State Building. The next changeover happened at 12:58 PM. It was a quick switch. Ares took over on the eggs and Astrid was out. At 2:34 There was another changing of the guard. This time Astrid took a turn. By this time, it had gotten colder and we were getting intermittent mixed precipitation. We didn’t see Ares for a while, but at 5:10 Astrid started calling like she saw him. Sure enough he showed up on the State Building right after that. Just when we were starting to wonder if he was ever going to relieve her on the nest he showed up on the west veranda with food. Astrid got off the eggs, danced across the crossperch, and took the food from him. She flew over to the hotel to eat it. After she finished it she pulled over some hunk of leftovers that had been sitting on the same ledge and started picking at it. She didn’t seem to like it and, after a minute she flew over to the State Building. At 7:21 the falcons did their last switch of the day. Ares flew over to the State Building and Astrid settled onto the eggs. He was off to his night perch fifteen minutes later. Goodnight all.