!!! Successful banding at Harlequin for the four Duncan Mill hatchlings!
May 26, 2016 - Toronto - Don Mills
Mark Nash Reports:
May 26th - 2016
Banding Day!!
A good day with two successful banding events today, with the William Osler Health care banding this morning and the Duncan Mill hatchlings this afternoon!
A huge thank you to Harlequin and to Don for all of their support and for hosting the banding again this year, we were joined by all to celebrate and be part of the 2016 banding!
A huge thank-you again to John Millar who was there for us again to descend down to the nest ledge from the upper roof area to safely extract the four young hatchlings for the banding, and get them back to the nest box, as everything went as planned without a hitch!
With Mark Heaton from the OMNRF at the banding table, all four hatchlings were successfully banded and returned back to Quest safely in record time.
Four healthy hatchlings, three males and one huge female hatchling, all four were safely banded, named, examined for their health and returned back to Quest.
Quest was in her fine form and on hand to “supervise” the extraction. Mac was also very visible, but remained at a distance most of the time, obviously confused about the entire event. Remembering that he is NOT the sire of the hatchlings and a young inexperienced male himself,, it will be very interesting to see how the balance of the season shakes out with Mac, - (the new resident adult male), who has obviously replaced the resident adult male Sky sometime after Quest laid her eggs! These hatchlings are not his!
Given that Quest has so far accepted Mac, (and he is in fact providing food to Quest),, it would also appear that Mac, has at least in part, accepted the fact that there are hatchlings and he has not made any motions to harm them, things seem to stable so far. It will be interesting to see if Mac will actually feed the hatchlings and later take the lead in the flight training of the four offspring?? As we know, it is the adult males primary role at fledge time to do most of the flight training with the fledglings. So far, Mac has not been observed actually feeding any of the hatchlings, as Quest has been very guarded over her young! Only time will tell!
So for the particulars of this years clutch of hatchlings,,
We have:
- a 685 gram male, 25 days old, Black banded Y over 25, with Blue tape, named Geddy
- a 695 gram male, 28 days old, Black banded Y over 26, with Yellow tape, named Achilles
- a 685 gram male, 28 days old, Black banded Y over 27, with White tape, named Jet
and a huge female, 965 grams, 26 days old, Black banded S over 54, with Red tape, named Marta
We have a HUGE amount of photos to process from the two bandings today and you must bear with us to get them posted. We are on the road and in the field again today with not much time in the office sitting down at the computers and the internet.
Stay tuned………………..
