!!! Just when you thought it was safe to go out of the house! False alarm, thank goodness!
July 09, 2014 - Scarborough - Yellow Pages
Mark Nash Reports:
July 9th - 2014
At 11:45pm last night my cell phone range out and had my scrambling to locate my phone. I must admit, I hesitated to actually answer the phone once I found it as calls that come in at this hour of the night are not usually attached with good news. This is the time of year when the fledge watches are over and we’ve already had to deal with the fledge mortality that is typical of the fledge watch period.
While the young fledglings are now able to hold their own altitude and no longer in need of our direct assistance rescuing them from the sidewalks and other ground dangers, it is the time when the we see the mortality increase again as the young fledgling peregrines are now way toooo over confident and get careless with the incredible speed that they have built up. If they haven’t already learned about windows early on in their first flights, making contact with windows at this stage of their flight development usually spells disaster and the mortality numbers increases yet again.
Well, the call came from the security desk across the street from the Yellow pages nest site, with security telling me that one of the young peregrine falcons was lying on its side on the ground out in the corner of their parking lot at 305 Milner and asked if someone was available to attend and could help the bird. They had one of their other security officers out in parking lot guarding the bird concerned that the bird wold be at risk as there were a number of wild cats and raccoons in the area.
So, it was back in the car out and on the road at midnight rushing to the Scarborough Milner business court location. I was met in the darkened parking lot by one of the Milner business court security officers who lead me out to where the bird was laying. As I approached , I prepared myself for the worst and remembering taking a deep breath in an effort to deal with what I was expecting to see.
Well, much to my surprise, the bird turned out to be a young fledgling pigeon, one that had obviously hit one of the office buildings and had sustained server injuries as a result of the impact. I was able to retrieve the bird and placed it into the rescue carrier wrapped in one of the towels for safe transport. Sadly, the bird died prior to arriving back home.