What appears to be our first legitimately pipped egg
It looks like we may have a legitimate pip this time. This time the egg that has the white spot (along with what looks to be a corresponding hole) appears also to be the first egg that was laid back on April 1st. That would certainly be the egg that we would expect to hatch first. It’s now been 32 days since full-time incubation began, and 33 days is the incubation period that the eggs required last year. We encourage falcon fans to keep watching and please alert us if you see a hatch or even if you get a clearer view of the pip. Stay tuned!!!
Today, 4 days earlier than the first day of our declared “hatch window” (May 6 – 13), we saw what we thought could be a pipped egg. A small roundish white mark near the top of one of the eggs might in fact be a pip. A pip is created when the chick inside the egg begins to break out of the shell from the inside. We still need to search through our archival footage to see if the spot was already on the egg and is just a blemish on the shell. This is the most likely answer, but we should stay alert, just in case. At the very least this will be a good dress rehearsal for late this week when the real thing is more apt to happen.
A pipped egg – or just a blemish?A closer view of the possible pipped egg
It’s closing in on 30 days since the first egg was laid on April 1st. Incubation has continued round the clock since April 5th. Hatching of all viable eggs are expected to take place sometime between May 6th and 13th. The first sign that a hatch is imminent is when an egg becomes “pipped”. A small whitish spot or a “pip” appearing on an egg means that the chick inside is beginning to break out. The time between the appearance of a pip and a hatch ranges widely, but last year the first pip preceded the first hatch by only a matter of hours. Seeing a pip spot on an egg can be difficult, especially if the eggs are only visible for brief moments when the parents relieve each other of incubation duties. Hopefully, we will see a pip soon after it appears and we will be able to alert everyone that a hatch is about to happen. Keep watching the video feed and look for our alerts on Facebook and on this website.
Today we had a bit of excitement when an intruder came into the territory and both Peregrines came out to defend the site. Fortunately, the eggs were left alone for only about a minute, which couldn’t be considered a significant lapse in incubation. Look below for a link to the video of today’s action. Watch carefully and you’ll see the falcons fly by the nest box a few times before Astrid finally returns and resumes incubation.
Closing in on hatching timeAstrid and Ares negotiate the incubation change-overMore delicate negotiations
This video clip begins with Astrid settling down onto 3 eggs. At 2 mins 45 seconds into it, she starts to lay the 4th egg. In the next 15 seconds she moves her tail and the new egg is revealed.
This morning at 11:50, Astrid laid her 4th and likely final egg. Interestingly, only 20 minutes before, she had returned to the nest box to relieve Ares from incubating. Ares didn’t seem to want to leave (it is after all, a miserable kind of day weather-wise), but Astrid insisted and took over sitting on what was then, the 3 eggs. We expected egg # 4 to come later in the day, so we were surprised when at one point she shifted and revealed it. The new egg was easy to pick out since it’s a brighter shade of brown than the others (all freshly laid eggs are). Though it’s conceivably possible that Astrid will produce a 5th egg, we think it’s unlikely, but just the same, we’ll be on the look out for it this coming Friday.
