!!! Full time incubation may have started??? Looking for your reports to upate us!
March 31, 2015 - Kitchener - CTV-Bell Media Tower
CPF Postmaster Reports:
March 31st- 2015
While we are still waiting to see if CTV and Bell Media will be hooking the live camera up to the internet so we can get a live feed or link to display to you, local observation reports are suggesting that full time incubation MAY have actually started?? If that is in fact the case,,, we could start the countdown to an anticipated hatch date,, which would be 33 to 35 days from when the female actually started her full-time incubation duties.
Remembering that the eggs are laid approx. every other day. This gives the pair time to copulate and fertilize, and then gives the female enough time to actually produce an egg, ( then actually lay it). It takes allot of resources from the females to actually produce and lay an egg, especially that of a peregrine falcon as their huge demands for calcium that makes up most of the mineral content of the egg shell itself. Unlike other birds, peregrines get all of their calcium from the actual bones of the other birds that they eat, and as such calcium is always at a premium!
The female peregrine will only do part-time incubation during the usual egg laying period (which typically last a week for 4 to 5 eggs to be produced and laid). This part-time incubation is just enough from preventing the eggs from cooling tooo much or from freezing, and typically under normal conditions, the female will not start her “full time” incubation until the second last egg is laid, (regardless of the amount of eggs that she actually ends up laying).
This type of normal incubation routine has the eggs all hatchling at approx. the same time (given the actual time it takes for her to lay the first egg to the last egg), as that could be more than a week apart depending on the amount of eggs that she actually produces.
The only time we would see the females go down into full time incubation sooner (or full time cooking as we say), is if the whether, (in particular) colder temperatures persist and there is a risk of cooling or freezing the eggs,, then the female will be forced to start her full time incubation right away - from that point on. When the female is forced to start her full time incubation early on in her egg production, this is where we see a much wider spread of hatching and the age of the chicks will very dramatically from the oldest to the youngest.
This makes for a challenging time for the peregrine adults to raise their young given how quickly they grow and fledge.
Stay tuned………