!!! 4 Eggs confirmed!!! Full time incubation!!
April 30, 2015 - Oshawa - Oshawa Activity
Mark Nash Reports:
April 30th - 2015
Some great news indeed! With a huge thank you to Ken and Ernie out at the Oshawa Lake Ridge Hospital for spending the time with me today, getting me safely to and from the roof elevation where the nest box was installed for the grins to complete a site visit and nest box inspection in an effort to confirm what’s been going on with the peregrines.
I am delighted to report that we can confirm that the pair are in fact involved in full time incubation with 4 eggs in the nest box!! In addition, one of the other two important questions was also answered, (who are the resident adults)??.
Well, we can positively confirm after reviewing the photos taken during my visit today that the resident adult female is in fact still Alfrieda, (a peregrine that was produced in Buffalo NY in 2012), banded with a Black over Green 73 over AW .
Sadly although, we were not able to confirm the identity of the resident adult male,, (but highly suspect that it is still Simcoe, Banded Black 63 over X), a peregrine that was produced at the Canada Square nest site in Toronto at Yonge & Eglinton. While the resident adult male was observed today as dawning a solid Black coloured band, we were NOT able to get a positive ID on him and we can not positively confirm that it is Simcoe.
Over the past two weeks, there has been a territorial dispute and fighting between two males,, so it will be interesting to see who the “victor” is!
Over the past weeks, Ernie has been monitoring the peregrines as close as he can and provided some really important observation reports that helped us plan the nest box install, and with the support of Ken and all of the engineering staff for physically getting the nest box installed at its current elevation without the need of a crane that was originally proposed to be able to get the nest box to its final resting place.
In short, a lot of brute force and back breaking manpower indeed, as you know, the new CPF nest boxes are now being made from the newer marine composite materials, (with the composite boards that are twice as heavy as the equivalent sized wood products)! Then there is the typical 50 pound bags of pea-gravel, with each nest box requiring 5 plus bags!
The next step is the nest box camera. Because of the rather hasty install of the net box,,, (remembering that the birds wait for no one),, and we were just in time to get the new nest box installed, there simply was not enough time to get the camera in along with all of the power lines and internet feeds installed.
Also remembering, that we made the decision to install the nest box at a different elevation that was originally planned, (due to the fact that the peregrines decided to go to another location and different elevation on the hospital that they nested on last season)!!! Talk about having to scramble AGAIN and change your plans! As you know, working with peregrines, you gotta be flexible and be able to act / react quickly!!
Over the next few weeks while the pair are involved in their incubation, (and thank goodness things will be much more stable), we will be working on the new nest box camera. It is our plan to have it programmed and ready to be installed during the time that the young hatchlings are out of the nest box while they are being banded. We will install the new colour nest box cam when we have to go to the nest box for the extraction, as this is a time that we have to wait at the nest box until the banded hatchlings are returned.
The hospital is planning to make ready a temporary power supply and the internet connection so we can power up the camera and get its live signal to the internet.
Stay tuned……………….
