Everything is fine in the world of the Js

Little J3 spent the night of June 14 on Rice, apparently alone. He flew back to the nest hoping to have breakfast at 7:46 am on June 15. Arthur quickly awarded him with a squirrel which he mantled with both feet. The little guy was really hungry and no one was there to steal his food! Great hawk reflexes though. A couple of hours later Arthur returned with a chippie. Full to the brim J3 spent the day lounging on the grating or the natal nest, sometimes sleeping on his favourite leaves. At sunset, he flew back to the Rice building where he spent the night. He was just waking up this morning, stretching, and sleepy.

J3 on the nest tower thinking about flying over to the Rice building to spend the night.
J3 getting into the line backer position to take off. He is really getting his flying skills down.
J3 getting in position to fly off of Rice to head back to the nest where he will spend his day eating the food drops from Arthur. He will fly out and over to Rice to spend his second night there.
J3 is figuring out how to tuck up his landing gear!
Arthur delivering breakfast to J3 over on the nest tower. A nice reward for all the effort of his fledging the previous day.
This is an excellent example of mantling prey – protecting it so no one else can get it.
The rear view of J3, now relaxing with no sibs about, eating his lunch chippie.

J1 also spent a bit of time on the nest rearranging the oak leaves that Big Red had brought in but most of her day was spent on top of Rice where her and J2 received prey drops from Big Red.

Around 5pm she made her way to the trees in front of the Fernow Building. At one point it looked like she wanted to get to the nest and she began breaking branches to aid her flight. Very intelligent. She then changed her mind. When I left her last night at 7pm she was in the Oak tree preening and this morning she was with a squirrel in one of the Oak trees in front of Fernow.

J2 is harder to keep up with as he is our “stealth bullet baby”. J2 has amazing flying abilities. It is like he skipped the learning stage and went to advanced intermediate. Yesterday he was aggravating a bunch of robins near the old coop buildings on the Cornell campus.

It is now the morning of June 16 and all is well with the J family. They are fed by the extraordinary hunting skills of their father, Arthur, aged 4. Their mother, Big Red, aged 17, keeps a close eye on the chicks. I wish I was on the ground chasing them about in Ithaca but, sadly, not. Postings about their development and happenings will appear daily albeit they could be short.

In the meantime preparations are ongoing, around the world, for the very first World Albatross Day on June 19. Stay tuned for information on that event as well as the challenges that both the Red Tail Hawks and Albatross face living with humans and machines.

Published by maryannsteggles

I went to the UK as a Commonwealth Scholar in 1990 and received my PhD from the University of Leicester in 1993. After three decades of university teaching, I retired to devote my time to the study of raptor behaviour. I am particularly interested in Ospreys and am working on a long term project on third hatch survival and siblicide in these raptors. My blog is a result of a fascination with my local wildlife and the desire to encourage others to love and care for birds! I live on the Canadian Prairies and prior to the pandemic travelled a lot. I am questioning the use of aviation fuel at the moment as we all strive to help our planet. My early research was in politics and art including British public statues exported to Southeast Asia and Vietnam Resistors that contributed much to Canadian ceramics. Books and articles were published on those subjects over a period of 3 decades. Now I am working on books for children so they can learn about the challenges our raptors face.

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