Author: Matt Perry

After banding the single Peregrine chick in the Syracuse nest, the DEC’s banding team came to Utica in order to band our 3 chicks. But after evaluating the situation on the ground,  the 2 team members, Wildlife Biologist Steve Heerkens and  the Utica Peregrine Falcon Project representatives were in full agreement that the banding should not go ahead as planned. It turned out that the box placement didn’t lend itself well to this type of procedure and since the safety of the young birds is of paramount importance, the banding was cancelled. Perhaps before the next breeding season a plan will developed specifically to deal how to safely extract nestlings from our nest box on the Adirondack Bank building, but as for this year – sorry there will be no bling for our babies. Better safe than sorry though!

Our apologies for the quality of the video feed lately. The view has become strangely compressed and the top banner with the date and time code has become extremely large. We are trying to fix this, but admittedly, it’s taking a while. We do appreciate everyone’s patience. Also, as everyone knows our primary camera  has become liberally anointed with whitewash. We were hoping to take advantage of the banding operation to wash off camera 1 and remove the feather vale from camera 2, but alas none of that will happen now. This means that we have to put up with our obstructed view for the duration of the season. Meanwhile the chicks are growing like weeds! Wing and tail feathers are noticeably larger everyday and they are beginning to look and act more like little raptors. Well actually they still look pretty ridiculous – something like wads of wool haphazardly bound together. It’s hard to believe that someday they will look as sleek and beautiful as their parents.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The New York State DEC intends on Banding the Utica Peregrine Falcon chicks sometime in the coming days. At just under 3 weeks old, the chicks are at the right age for this procedure to take place. It is believed that the easy access to this particular nest box will make this an especially quick process and that should help to minimize the stress caused to the parent birds. Banding is not usually very stressful for nestlings, nor is it painful in any way. The simple leg bands will not inhibit the birds abilities at all. Banding is regularly done with Peregrine Falcons across New York State as they are still designated as Endangered Species. Being able to keep track of individuals is considered important for conservation of the species. We will monitor the entire process and try to post some video after it takes place. The live cam will not be in operation during the procedure.

Well folks, we switched to the backup camera only to discover that there are 2 feathers adhering to it and intermittently obscuring the view. Good Grief!! On the positive side, there doesn’t appear to be any whitewash on it. Still we may switch back to camera one at least until the feathers blow off the backup. Our apologies for these problems. This is our first year of this project and it shows. The important thing is that all is well at the nest!

The Utica Peregrine chicks continue growing by leaps and bounds. After only 2 weeks we are seeing the beginnings of feathers developing on their wings and tail. The parents’ nest duties have changed again over the last few days with Ares taking a more active role in feeding the chicks. Many of us have seen examples of the parents holding prey above the young, allowing them to tear at it some before a normal feeding begins. Meanwhile our Utica Peregrine Falcon team has enabled our backup camera. Though our current streaming service will not carry more than one camera feed at a time, having a second camera in standby mode is good news in case the main camera goes down or gets hit with more whitewash. Later on when the chicks start congregating closer to the outside edge of the box, we may switch to the 2nd camera since it would allow a better view. Obviously it would be ideal to be able to stream both cameras simultaneously. Perhaps your contributions to this project will help us to do that before this breeding season is over!

Some may have noticed some unfamiliar terms showing up in the comment section of this blog. For the most part these are terms used by ornithologists, wildlife biologists and falconers when referring to raptors and specifically to Peregrine Falcons. “Eyases” refers to Peregrine chicks or nestlings. A “tiercel” is a male falcon while the female is referred to simply as “falcon”. Early on when planning this website and blog we made the decision not to use terminology that wasn’t immediately accessible to a general audience, even though it’s highly likely that regular nest cam viewers know all of these terms. Of course people commenting are welcomed to use what ever terminology they like in their own comments. I just thought that we should define these terms in order to avoid confusion.