One if not Two More Hatches to Come!

Utica Peregrine Falcon Update for May 10, 2018 –

This morning was overcast, very windy and rain was threatening. Temperatures stayed in the 60’s for much of the day. Rain did fall in the afternoon for a while, but it didn’t last long. Storms seemed to be missing Utica. Astrid had come back to her new chicks at 7:28 last night. Ares brought food to the box at 1:08 AM, and Astrid conducted the feeding. It was a little hard to tell what was going on in the box due to the lack of light. It looked like both chicks got fed. Astrid seemed to want to continue feeding after both nestlings were satiated and toppled over. She was chirping and trying to coax the chicks to take more, but they wouldn’t or couldn’t. Astrid finally flew out with the food and Ares sat with them until she returned a few minutes later. Ares relieved Astrid at the nest at just past 5 AM, but she wasn’t gone for more than a couple of minutes. Ares came again at 5:27 – this time with prey, but Astrid sent him away. He tried again less than 15 minutes later and she sent him off again.

The next feeding took place at 7:15. Ares brought the prey and this time Astrid said yes. I understand that both chicks were adequately fed, but in the part of it I saw, Astrid would rip a strip off the carcass, almost give it to a chick and then decide that it was too big or something else wasn’t right with it. She ate all the reject pieces herself. As a result of her quality control regim, was that she was getting a meal too. At 8:25, Ares was back to the box with more food, but Astrid sent him out again. The falcons switched at 9:04, and Ares took over the clutch. He seemed a bit more comfortable with them today than he did yesterday. He brooded the chicks together with the two eggs just like Astrid does. At 9:17, Ares’ short turn was up and Astrid was on duty at the box again. At 11:09, another feeding was underway. Both chicks seemed to get a fair amount this time. Astrid flew out with the leftovers and Ares came in to sit while she was gone. She was back to the nest a few minutes later and Ares was off to the State Building.

At 11:26, without warning calls or anything, Astrid left the box and flew south with purpose. Ares was nowhere in sight at the time. Was there an intruder? Ares came to the nest about 8 minutes later and brooded the clutch until Astrid returned at 11:38. Seeing her dart out like a guided missile made me recall a time nine years ago when I watched Maya (Utica’s first fulltime resident female Peregrine) fly like a missile after a Merlin that had the audacity to enter the canyon. Perhaps Astrid had launched after a Merlin or a Cooper’s Hawk. We tried hard but we couldn’t confirm that any of the other two eggs were pipped. One does have some white staining that resembles a pip. The same spots have fooled us again and again.  At 2:00, something stirred up the falcons – we don’t know what, but Astrid left and Ares came in to be with the clutch. Astrid was back in fifteen minutes and took over on the nest. The wind was picking up at this point and storms were threatening, but they didn’t come. At 4 PM, Ares screeched through the canyon and landed back on the State Building. He had prey and he was plucking it. Two minutes later he took it to the box and Astrid accepted it. As she was feeding the two chicks, the two unhatched eggs were right in front. Both appeared to be pipped! During the course of the feeding, one of them began to crack. A fissure large enough to see a chick inside was visible through the end of the meal and then Astrid tucked it back under her. We thought for sure that a hatch was imminent, but three hours later, there were still two intact eggs in the clutch. Astrid was keeping them either completely covered or partially covered for that whole time. Ares brought food at 6:15, but she sent him away. At 6:50, he came to do a shift, but she wasn’t having that either. She sent him away again. She wasn’t going to leave the nest with a chick about to hatch. It’s most likely that a third egg is going to hatch either this evening or early tomorrow morning. As it gets dark in the canyon, we begin to lose our ability to see exactly what’s going on in the nest box. In other words, we may not know we have a new chick until sometime early Friday morning.