!!! Not the best finish to the day :-(
June 23, 2016 - Toronto - Canada Square Building - Yonge and Eglinton
Mark Nash Reports:
June 23rd - 2016
While it was a good day overall today on the Uptown Toronto fledge watch here at the Canada Square, the day’s fledge closed on a downer note.
We arrived early this morning and much to our delight, all three juveniles were still high on the nest building,, exactly where we had left them at darkness last night when we closed the fledge watch for the evening. Louise was on the upper west porch ledge to the right of the nest ledge, Quasar was on the upper nest ledge porch and Symphony was still on the upper west balcony level, and both parents were in view.
The day was much cooler with no humidity and overcast, and I must say absolutely delightful in comparison to the 30 plus degrees and debilitating humidity that we had to deal with two days ago!!
So first the good news,, Louise finally took her first flight this afternoon and was successful in returning back to the exact ledge that she started from,, (this after bumping off a few windows on the RioCan building while trying to land on the small concrete pillars on the south wall of the building that her parents are often found roosting on),, and then trying to land on the top of one of the black columns above the nest ledge level on the Canada Square nest building.
Throughout her entire flight, her father - “Malik” flew by her side like her wing man,, and accompanied her in an effort to steer her clear and guid her to a safe landing, but alas, you know kids,, rarely do they listen to their parents! Thus was the case,, with several bumps with the windows, (some window washing as we say), and some concrete busting, they eventually learn by their mistakes, through trial and error,, Louise flew back around to the nest building , collided with the concrete and flopped back down to the ledge where she began her.
For the next hour, she hunkered down out of our sight on the ledge with an obvious bruised ego and shaken confidence. While we knew that the concrete busting was not life threatening or hard enough to cause her injury we waited patiently for her to pop back up into our view,,, and she eventually did, obviously no worse for ware. She remained on this ledge for the balance of the day and eventually settled down by darkness when we departed for the evening.
Quasar on the other hand, stayed tight to her ledge all day, with lost of screaming both to and at her parents during many of their fly-bys, with lost of flapping and several down and outright tantrums!!
Now the not so good news,,, with Symphony taking her second flight. Late this afternoon, Symphony took to the air for the second time and flew north up Duplex finally landing on a west facing balcony of the apartment building just north of Eglinton. The good news is that she didn’t lose any altitude. The bad news, is that she was now out of sight of both the nest building and her parents. Bruce repositioned himself further north on Duplex to keep a direct line of sight on her while Cathy Marion and myself stayed firm to keep an eye on the other two siblings fearing that all of the adults fly-bys would have them bolting into flight.
After more than an hour of roosting quietly on the apartment balcony, she bolted into the air flying north on Duplex and was quickly out of Bruce’s view. Bruce, Cathy and myself searched the area further to the north, west and east but we were unable to locate her. The good news is that she had a great deal of altitude and a rather strong flight.
Unfortunately, by the time darkness fell and the end of the days fledge watch, Symphony’s location had eluded us and her location remained a mystery.
We are hopeful that we will be able to locate her tomorrow.