Site Check in Waterloo Reveals a Different Female On Site
March 30, 2014 - Kitchener - CTV-Bell Media Tower
Tracy Simpson Reports:
Today Bruce and I made our way out to Waterloo to check in on the resident adults progress towards the nesting season. When we arrived we initially didn’t have any birds in view so we started a walkabout of the nest building looking for the pair. On the north side of the nest building we located a roosting adult sitting in the lee of the wind which we believed to be the female. We left her there roosting while we went to get the scopes and upon our return, we found the male flying around the west side sign. He flew out over the parking lot and up into the nest box with the female right behind him. The two of them entered the nest box and were there for a good 5 minutes before the male emerged and flew around to the west side sign. The female remained in the box and we made our way over to check him out. As we re-positioned, the female came out of the box and flew around to the north side parapet that she had just recently left.
We caught up with the male roosting on the west side sign and here we split our resources; Bruce stayed on the male and I went around to the north to watch the female. Given that the pair were both out for a prolonged period, we suspected that there were no eggs present and we now set to trying to ID the adults. Just as we were setting up the scopes the male takes to the air and retrieves a cache of prey. He flies out towards the west drawing the female off of her roost. She then meets him in the air and literally fights him for the prey. He squealed at her and refused to let go so they both made away with a portion of their own. She returned to the north side parapets to eat and he went back to the west side sign. This was pretty strange for a bonded couple ready to lay eggs.
Then things really got weird. After eating, the female took off of the north side parapet and flew around to the west side sign landing on the “U”. The male was quite annoyed with this and made 5 or 6 passes at her seemingly trying to get her off of the sign. He was alarm calling as he did this. He finally settled on a parapet above and to the right of her and she decided to now roost and rest for a while. This afforded us looks for identification and we confirmed two things. The male bears a black over red band that is consistent with Caster, the male that has been present for the past two seasons. We couldn’t say for sure if the band read 16 over B as the winds and his height made that very difficult. The female was facing in towards the building and during her preening we were able to see, and photograph, her un-banded legs. This was not Statler.
Where Statler is we can’t say. We do believe that this is a recent event as Caster seems very confused by this and copulation did not occur once during our entire visit of several hours. We met up with Rudy and he watched with us for a while and agrees that this is a recent event. The Waterloo team will be watching to see how this all shakes out and although the nesting season for the site is moving forward and the pair are focusing their attention on the nest box, it looks like it will be somewhat delayed.