We still have two crazy active falcons here !!!!!!!!!! They seem to like the snow.
Thank you to Alison of the CMNH Forum for bringing this news to my attention! I’m sure fans of Freedom and Purity will happy to hear that one of their offspring - Millie, born in 2005 is the new resident female at the Monroe Power Plant in Michigan. She was previously nesting at Toledo Edison’s Bay Shore power plant in Oregon, Ohio. Not sure what happened there but happy to hear that she came to no harm and has now found a new home.
Her new mate is Leopold, a 14 year old PF that has been at this site since 1997. They produced two chicks this year named Heidi and Tyson. Two more great grand-children for Mariah and Kaver of Rochester!
Thank you again to Alison for sharing this exciting news!!
Thanks to Carol Phillips our friend in Rochester N.Y. the new falcon here has been ID’d. M/82, black/green is Treasure (female) hatched at the Terminal Tower Cleveland Ohio Apr. 27 2007. We’re not sure if she has taken over the nest box but has been here for a week or so that we know of and could be more. Falcon activity here is abound, however not producing young ones which is very discouraging. We are keeping a close eye to see if Millie is still in the picture. Next year is another year & hopefully we have a dominant pair that can have a successfull brood. All I know is that every falcon we see here is impressive & special.
Doug Garbutt
It’s getting harder to keep track of the resident falcons here. I’m not sure if there 2 or 3 falcons present. Since all 4 of this years eggs were destroyed (assuming by the falcons), I thought that the original pair of Millie & Buffalo Bill were still the residents. However, today one of the falcons currently controlling the box was positively I.D’d and it is neither Millie(11/W solid black) or Buffalo Bill(68/R black over green). Instead it is a new falcon (M/82 black over green). There is lots of action here, we’re just having trouble following it. If I learn more I’ll report back. Perhaps Mark can I.D. this new bird.
Doug Garbutt
If you have photos of any of the CPF monitored nest sites, birds or fledglings in this exciting time, we would love to see them! If you have older photos or videos from CPF events, like the 2009 Sportsman show, we would love to see those too.
We’ve got a flickr group that you can upload photos and short videos to. If you have longer videos, upload them to youtube and tag them with cpf and peregrine and I will find them.
Example shot from the Sheraton Banding in the Flickr Pool -
We might include some of the videos or photos in our updates, or around the site. You could be famous!
Matt.
There has not been much to get excited about here lately but the last couple of days the birds appear to be showing signs of courtship behaviour. It may be too late for a 2nd clutch this year but the birds have been seen scraping & e-chupping & they have not been doing that since the terretorial dispute (there has been no sign of 3rd falcon in the area lately). We have not seen any copulation but as I have stated, this pair is really hard to view from our vantage point.
I noticed today on the monitor that the remaining 2 eggs (which have been badly neglected the last week or so) have also been broken. There are now remnants of shells but nothing else. Millie was observed in the box for over an hour just doing houskeeping & walking around. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.
Today it is confirmed that there are 3 falcons here. They were all seen at the same time by Rolf. And if we were wondering if the remaining 2 eggs will be able to hatch, we are wondering no more as the birds were not on them all day or in the morning when I arrived at work at 6:00 am. I think our only hope to have young ones this year is if they have another clutch. We are also wondering if it is possible that the 3rd falcon could be Freedom. It is very difficult to get a good look at bands here in this situation as the falcons are guarding the nest box at all times and this is our best spot to view them. The intruding falcon is not able to get close enough for us to view his or her bands (providing it has any). Don’t worry though, it’s just a matter of time before we get that information.
On April 25th a falcon was spotted chasing another falcon forcing it to within 6′ of the water. I think there are 3 falcons here & a dispute is in progress. When I returned to work on Monday 27th , the clutch of 4 eggs was reduced to 2! To add to that, after about 3 weeks of hard incubation (we barely had a chance to view any eggs during this time), the birds were off the eggs most of the day even although it was a warm 70 degrees. Today was the same thing, the birds were hardly on the eggs all day but the temp. was a cool 55 degrees. It was also obvious that the birds seemed a bit on edge. I’m not sure what this means for the chance of these eggs being viable but we’re still hoping.
For those of you that have been following the Rochester falcons, you already know that there resident falcons there have had a tough go this year. If you don’t know I’ll bring you up to speed. 1st of all, they had to move their nest box as Kodak needed to do major repairs to the structure where the falcons were nesting. The female (Mariah) was traumatised by the netting they put up to restrict her access & the male (Kaver) did not return this year. Mariah ended up severly injured in a terreratorial dispute by 2 young intruders, a male & a female. It turns out that the male in question is a 2006 bird from Port Colborne named “Archer”. For those of you who don’t know, our plant name (ADM) stands for “Archer Daniels Midland” so we thought Archer was an appropriate name. Please keep in mind that Freedom (the male who produced Archer) is the 1st offspring of Mariah & Kaver, so although it is very sad to see what has happened to 2 of the most prolific falcons in recorded history, we here in Port Colborne are glad to hear that one of Mariah’s grandsons lives on in the skies of Rochester hopefully to carry on the legacy. I have more news but it will have to wait until tommorow.