!!! Banding Success!! 2 females & 1 male!! All very healthy indeed!!
May 26, 2015 - Toronto - Don Mills and Eglinton - Amexon
Mark Nash Reports:
May 26th - 2015
Banding day!
Meet Lily-Gean , Horton and Morgan.
Lily-Gean - 680 grams, Female, 19 days old, banded Black Y over 94 - with Yellow Tape
Horton - 585 grams, Male, 24 days old, banded Black Y over 09 - with Blue Tape
Morgan - 820 grams, 23 days old, banded Black Y over 95 with Red Tape
It was a busy day for all today with the CPF out in the field again to day running from the Kitchener banding event at the Kitchener CTV studios back to Toronto to the Don Mills nest site banding.
You can see some of the video that John Millar captured with the new CPF wireless camera at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTZKmYVPdfM&feature=youtube_gdata
A big thank you to Amexon property management group for hosting the banding event today and allowing us access to their board room to do the banding, and to John Millar, our volunteer climber that once again braved the heat and humidity and the nest ledge and the resident adults as he scaled down from the upper roof elevation down the side of the building to the nest ledge to extract the young peregrine hatchlings, wait in position to distract the both of the parents until the three hatchlings were banded and then returned them safely to the nest ledge back to their parents.
Again a big thank you to Mark Heaton from the Aurora district of the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forests who was on hand to complete the banding in record time!
And a big thank you to Kathy, Erma and Lucie, members of the fledge watch team that were on hand and able to attend the banding today.
By the time that we got back to Toronto from the Kitchener banding, it was 30 plus degrees with a very high humid-X that was almost debilitating!! Both the resident adult peregrines were not only on site to “supervise”, but the resident adult female was waiting for us on the upper retaining wall ledge directly above the nest ledge as we came through the door to the access the upper roof area of the nest building. Kinda spooky actually, as it would appeared that she was expecting us!
Despite the extreme heat and humidity, John set up and scaled down from the upper roof of the nest building down to the nest ledge without incident and safely extracted the three young peregrine hatchlings, bagged them, and they were drawn back up to the upper roof via the duffle bag and a rope and were taken back down to the ground and the to Mark Heaton waiting in the boardroom for banding.
With Marion assisting Mark Heaton at the banding table, along with Guiomar from the Amexon Development Corporation, the three young peregrine hatchlings were sexed, examined to check out their health, and successfully banded, named and safely returned to John Millar who got them safely back to their parents without incident.
It is worth noting that during the hour long event while the three hatchlings were down in the board room being banded, as usual and planned, John remained in position on the nest ledge to distract the adult peregrines from realizing the their chicks had every been removed from the nest ledge. During this time, John notes that at one point, the resident adult female actually flew to and landed on the nest ledge, positioned herself only feet away from John and actually stayed with John for close to 20 minutes, (obviously vocalizing her objection to his presence), but completely unaware (and as planed), and totally distracted from every knowing that her babies were absent from the nest ledge.
At one point, the two were involved in an intense staring contest, where, if looks could kill, John would have been dead! 
As planned, when the three young hatchlings were returned safely back to the nest ledge, (and as John ascended back to the upper roof area), both resident adults were (at least in their own minds) left with the thoughts, that they had been successful in defending off yet another intruder and driving him away.
Just another day in a peregrine’s daily life at the nest, successfully defending and driving off all of the unwanted intruders!
By the time that we had finished and assembled in the parking lot, both adult peregrines were observed settled back down onto the nest ledge with their three young hatchlings. John also noted, that the resident adult female peregrine was not dawning any leg bands, (consistent to our knowledge of the resident adult female) and although the resident adult male never really came very close, we did see that he had a solid Black band, indicating that he is a Canadian produced peregrine. Sadly although, we were not able to get a clear identification of his leg band number to confirm his identity during this visit.
Stay tuned for photos. (There are allot of photos and video to edit and downsize yet before we can get them posted), so please bear with us …..
