Tag Archives: kestrels

Monday Morning in Bird World

25 February 2022

It is a beautiful morning on the Canadian Prairies. The sun is out a little bit and white snow fell overnight. The birds are very happy. They do not like the 45 kph gusts last night or the torrential rain on Saturday. I am also feeling lucky that we are not flooding and sad for the people and wildlife that are struggling with continuing flood waters in southern Manitoba and at various parts of Winnipeg.

I am going to begin with the sad news.

I wanted to make sure before I provided any more incorrect information about Little Bit. I have been monitoring the nest for many hours at UFlorida. Despite being fed Sunday after 86 hours without food, Little Bit lost its struggle to live. The precise time is unknown. The tiny wee one was almost delirious eating fish yesterday. It was such a joyful ten minutes watching Little Bit have some fish. It made us hopeful. At the time, the little one had not had a ps in a long time and at what point are its internal organs damaged? The heat at the top of the nest is hugely problematic in terms of hydration if fish are not consumed for that is where the osplets get their water. Little Bit got to eat because three fish came on the nest in quick succession. With the arrival of the third one, Big beaked Little Bit and fought with Middle. After some fish, the older two finally collapsed. It was only on their collapse that Little Bit got to eat and eat it did for ten minutes. I bet fish never tasted so good. Then another fish arrived, a 4th one, at 18:32:45. The female dragged that fish right across Little Bit’s head. It looks as if that is the precise place where Little Bit passed on. I had hoped for a miracle for this third hatch who wanted to live and who had such a wonderful start to life. This nest truly looked promising. The turn came on 10 April and for the past two weeks the baby suffered great abuse. There was a bit of a reprieve on the 18th and then the programme of siblicide began again on the 19th. — Those are a summary of the facts as we know them of Little Bit’s struggle to live on this nest. I had so hoped you would be alive and eating this morning, Little Bit. It was not meant to be. Fly high, Little One. Fly high. Soar.

The Osprey nest at Captiva is vacant this morning. Middle (or Little) was there yesterday. The parents should be feeding the chicks off camera. There has been no word on Little (or MiniO) since she fledged. If you look at the tree closest to the shore to the left of the scrape box you will see what I believe is an Osprey. This was Middle (or Little’s) tree that it liked to sit on. Perhaps it is him.

If you are in the market for a property at Captiva with an Osprey and Eagle nest, Lori Covert’s property is for sale.

The falcons and the hawks have been ignored, at times, in favour of the eagles and the ospreys so I want to check on some of these other nests while returning to a couple of Osprey nests that are normally very stable.

There is a Red-tail Hawk nest streaming cam in San Francisco at The Presidio. I had no idea. What a surprise in the wee hours of the morning when it just appeared. There are two chicks. They still have their white down and they are feisty!

The Presidio’s resident Red-tailed Hawk pair have been hard at work preparing their nest 100 feet up in one of the Presidio’s blue gum eucalyptus trees. The information tells me that “The Presidio is an important stop on the Pacific Flyway, the major north-south flyway for migratory birds, which means it’s a hotspot for birdwatching with 323 different types of birds spotted (so far!) in the park.”

The two eggs were laid the middle of March. The site does not state when they hatched but they look to be less than a week old but slightly older than Big Red’s chick, L1.

I do not know anything about this nest but I am quite excited. With only two chicks in this nest, both of them should grow happily. In general, it is easier to watch the hawk and falcon nests than the eagles and Ospreys as food competition and sibling rivalry are much less frequent.

Breakfast Monday morning. So well behaved like little falcons normally are.

This is simply fantastic news. Here is the link to follow this Red-tail Hawk family in California!

Early morning at the Buckinghamshire Council offices in the UK and there is that beautiful Peregrine Falcon. No eggs yet. Predicting soon!

We also have Peregrine Falcons in Manitoba. There are several streaming cams as part of the Peregrine Recovery Project. Ella and Pip have their scrape on the top of the Radisson Hotel in downtown Winnipeg. The couple have three eggs. Check out The Peregrine Chick on Twitter for news.

The last of the three eggs were laid on the 22nd of April and now it is hard incubation. Egg 1 was laid on the 17th with egg 2 on the 20th. Ella was tucked up tight as the cold weather returned to the ‘peg.

One of the great things that the local group has done is to compile a listing of Peregrine Falcon cameras in North America as well as world sites. It is not comprehensive as I see it does not include the Utica, New York scrape. Utica, you might want to send them a note and ask to be included. On that same page as the listing are a number of books related to Peregrine Falcons and other links. For the cameras, you just have to click on the site and presto – another cam with falcons to keep you awake!

http://www.species-at-risk.mb.ca/pefa/r-resources.html

I cannot find the live feed for the Utica cam of Astrid and her mate but, an article was posted on on the 24th on Falcon Watch Utica FB page.

Sunday, April 24, 2022 – Warm Weather Leads to Egg Shading for the First Time this Season & Intruder in the Late Afternoon

It was a gorgeous morning at the Cape Henlopen Osprey Nest in Lewes, Delaware this morning. Mum and Dad were both on the nest. Dad kept coming to see if he could have a turn at incubation and Mum kept refusing!

The site will not let me embed their camera link so search for the nest at YouTube.

L3 has hatched for Big Red and Arthur at the Cornell nest in Ithaca. That happy event happened at 06:03 this morning. Lined up from left to right: L3, L2, and L1. Big Red is trying to convince them that they want an early morning breakfast!

It looks like it is hard to keep 3 moving chicks and an egg comfortably under you, Big Red.

It is hard to see from the glare but Rhett and Scarlett are back making nestorations and mating on the Savannah Osprey Nest that was previously leased to the Great Horned Owls. I wonder how the season will go. It is late Osprey eggs in the region but, I guess we will find out!

Here is the link to this camera. Note that the Ospreys are not always on the nest.

Annie and Alden at the UCalifornia-Berkeley’s Campanile scrape are doing fantastic. What a great team they are! During the Q & A a question was asked about Alden’s personality or character. We learned some very intriguing things about Annie’s new mate. The first is that he ‘sings or talks’ a lot more than Grinnell. Alden also likes to hunt at night. The raptors are asleep but the other birds are awake and flying. The light pollution aids in hunting but the falcons have good night vision. This could also help Alden with his hunting since he has a badly healed injury in his left ankle area (this is what CalFalcons believes observing him). Alden has no trouble killing his prey but he might have difficulties holding on to it so if he dropped it at night there is less chance that a predator would get it! Smart one, Alden. It might surprise you but Cal Falcons noticed that Alden is much more aggressive in his defence of Annie and the eggs and the territory than Grinnell. For now, Alden is working hard for Annie and those three eggs. That is his only focus!

Hatch watch is May 5-6 and Sean and Lynn will be holding another Q & A at that time. These are great opportunities to learn about falcons! If you miss them, the couple are great to archive them on YouTube for you. Here is the link to the CalFalcons cam:

If you are wanting to watch an Osprey nest, I cannot recommend one more highly right now than Richmond and Rosie at the Richmond Shipping Yards in San Francisco Bay. They are a solid couple that has no trouble raising three osplets! This year they have three eggs that hatched on April 5, 8, and 11.

Here is the link to the camera of the SF Ospreys and Golden Gate Audubon:

Home

Do you love kestrels? The first egg has been laid in the Yorkshire Dales kestrel nest! It arrived yesterday, the 24th of April at 12:50.

The Jackdaws have been a problem for this raptor couple. I hope they do not return! Here is the link to the camera which is operational from 08:00-20:00 daily, nest time.

The Cornell Bird Lab also has a kestrel nest that has four eggs. The fourth was laid on 23 April at 12:11 and it appears that hard incubation may have begun. This nest has not had a problem with Jackdaws that I am aware of!

Here is the link to this Kestrel nest in Wisconsin:

At 10:39, Mum and the two eldest surviving chicks on the UFlorida-Gainesville Osprey nest all had large crops. It is very possible that like the Dale Hollow Bald Eagle nest, this Osprey nest will settle down and there will be no more food rivalry. Only time will tell if the fish deliveries can keep up with the demand.

Thank you for joining me today. This has been a hop and skip around some familiar nests with some new ones added. I will check on all our favourites later today. Take care everyone. See you soon.

Thank you to the following for their streaming cams and/or FB pages or Twitter feeds: UFlorida-Gainesville Ospreys, Captiva Ospreys and Window for Wildlife, Presidio RTH SF, Buckinghamshire Council, Peregrine Chick, Utica Peregrine Falcons FB, Cape Henlopen SP Ospreys, Cornell RTH, Landings Savannah Osprey, and Cal Falcons.

Thursday Morning in Bird World

14 April 2022

Dyson sends his love to everyone and he wants you to know that he is doing what he does best – getting seeds off the hard seed cylinders!

Thank you so much for your kind notes. The snow storm did precisely what had been predicted. There was a lull yesterday in the late afternoon and then the snow began with earnest around midnight. The forecast is now at the higher end of the snow accumulation at 80 cm or 2.62 feet. We continue to clear periodically and put down a line of seed that extends across 9 metres or 30 feet of decking and keep the feeders full and check on the hard seed cylinders as they need replacing. It has been a challenge. The sheer number of birds in the garden speaks to the recent arrival of thousands of birds during spring migration. Rain is set to start shortly turning to snow in the afternoon. Could it get worse for our feathered friends? The winds continue to bring some white out conditions. Hopefully the storm will taper off, as predicted, late Friday. Sadly, it brings out the worst in the birds who are hungry and fearful that they will starve to death. It is not unlike the beaking in the streaming cam nests when a weather event or diminished prey delivery sets off the ‘survival’ instinct in the biggest bird. Difficult to watch.

When you think you have absolutely ‘had it’ – you ‘are done’ with the birds and their beaking and bonking, stop and watch this piece of archival film that Charles Puleston shot in one of his Osprey nests on Long Island in the 1950s. It is called ‘My Turn’.

I can promise you that there is nothing more joyful, more tearful, and more satisfying than having a third hatch almost die in front of your eyes and then to have them turn around and become the most clever and dominant bird on the nest! It happens! Those are the nests you never forget.

A few of you have written to me in the last week about your need to pull back from the streaming cams and the chats that go along with some of the nests. The last note came this morning from a reader and I thought it would be a good time to discuss this. Watching the streaming cams can often bring about a sense of utter helplessness and frustration instead of the joy you anticipated. Instead of shutting the birds out of your life, I would like to make a couple of recommendations. The first is to educate yourself about the species you are watching. You do not have to purchase the books, go to your local library and if they do not have a copy see if they can order one in for you to borrow. The second is to arm yourself with emergency call numbers. Last year when a fostered Osprey chick fell off the nest at Patuxent River’s nests, the nature centre was closed. No one was answering the phone. People watched in horror hearing the chick splashing in the water. A number of us began to call leaving messages. One of the staff heard these and took their canoe back out to the park and found the chick – just in time – and literally tossed it back on the nest. This was a perfect outcome. That said frantic phone calls came from Hawaii, Canada, and the US to anyone who would listen. Every streaming cam needs the number of the local wildlife rehabber. Sadly, they do not post them. So it is up to you to find those numbers and have them ready if something happens. You also need to understand that most times help does not come. That is why Patuxent was simply so fantastic.

OK. Back to educating yourself. If you want to understand how the use of DDT caused the large Apex predators such as Eagles and Osprey to become almost extinct, get a copy of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Here is an article that speaks to the importance of this book.

Find out who Dennis Puleston was to the environmental movement and how he signalled the decline in Ospreys. Who was Charles Broley to the Bald Eagle community? These are people who fought the good fight to protect and restore the populations of Ospreys and Bald Eagles. You should know who they are. For a specific UK approach, any of the books by Mark Avery who headed the RSBP for 25 years are excellent.

The current threat is often from climate change and for eagles it is heat. Many eagles went into care last summer as did Ospreys particularly in the Pacific Northwest. One of the newest additions that David Hancock (Hancock Wildlife) is adding to the artificial nests for the Eagles in British Columbia, Canada is a shade screen. Ground breaking. How fantastic! Indeed, you might have noted the artificial nest in the Miami Zoo for the WRDC nest. These human-made nests will become more common as trees fail just as artificial platforms are now common for Ospreys.

How many times have you seen individuals belittled and having to apologize for putting human emotions on birds? This especially happens in some chats. I suggest that you read Marc Bekoff, The Emotional Lives of Animals. Good solid research. You won’t apologize again! Jennifer Akerman’s The Genius of Birds and The Bird Way are also very good.

My library is mostly full of books on Ospreys and the smaller raptors, Peregrine Falcons and Red-tail Hawks.

Falcons: The Peregrine by J.A. Baker, Falcon by Helen Macdonald, and H is for Hawk are some good starters. Winter’s Hawk speaks to the persecution of the Red-tail Hawk where I grew up, in Oklahoma. The Kings and their Hawks gives a particular historical perspective. These are a few to get you started.

Ospreys: Alan Poole’s Ospreys is a good solid introduction to the birds. I am particularly fond of David Gessner’s Soaring with Fidel: An Osprey Odyssey from Cape Cod to Cuba and Beyond for a good look at the issue of migration, particularly the New England ospreys. It is a good read. Gessner’s other books speak to various environmental issues impacting birds. There are others: Scottish Ospreys by Philip Brown, Lady of the Loch by Helen Armitage amongst others. I will try and bring one up now and then.

If you want to understand migration, A World on the Wing. The Global Odyssey of Migrating Birds is a great start!

If you want a good laugh, Zarankin’s Field Notes from an Unintentional Birder is excellent!!!!

I did a quick check on some of the nests. The third hatch is hanging in there at the UFlorida Gainsville Osprey nest! Good for it. Spunky little thing.

Here is the link to the UF Osprey cam. It is not on YouTube.

https://wec.ifas.ufl.edu/extension/ospreycam/

The sun is coming out on Little Middle and Big at the Dale Hollow nest. They will be anxious for some fish to arrive on their nest.

Deb Stecyk did a short video of Big and Little Middle in the storm.

I found a new Peregrine Falcon nest this morning! It is in the UK at the Chichester Cathedral. There are four eggs.

When people get burnt out of watching Bald Eagles and Ospreys – where there is often a lot of beaking – I highly recommend both falcon and hawk nests. They are often overlooked because they are smaller raptors but the way that they take care of their young is reassuring that life is good.

There is also a Kestrel nest in Yorkshire. Eggs soon!

I highly recommend the streaming cam of Big Red and Arthur at the Cornell Campus in Ithaca, New York. Good solid nest. Big Red is 19 and Arthur is 6. Big Red has been raising little hawklets for 17 years – for ten on camera. Only one did not fledge and that was K2 in 2021 due to a beak injury and infection. There is also a good respectful moderated chat for a couple of hours in the morning.

The Queen of the RTHs, Big Red incubating four eggs on the Fernow Light Tower. This is the first time she has laid 4 eggs since the camera was set up in 2012.

Indeed, you will notice a lot of nests of falcons and hawks with four eggs this year. It could be nature’s way of adjusting for the quickly spreading Avian Flu.

Half way around the world, Lesser Spotted Eagles will be nesting in Latvia. The nest of Anna and Andris is now happy as Andris returned from his migration yesterday. Anna came home on the 12th.

And because incubation can be so boring to watch, Cal Falcons has done a really fast day in the life of Annie and the New Guy incubating! So funny and a good way to end this blog.

All of the nests seem to be doing fine. The first egg at Llyn Clywedog was laid at 10:27 this morning UK time. That is the nest of Dylan and Seren. I will be checking on those UK Osprey nests later today.

Thank you so much for joining me and for all of your good wishes, prayers, and warm thoughts for us and the garden birds and animals in the storm. It is much appreciated. Take care everyone. See you soon!

Under the Feeders. 14 April 2022

Thank you to the following for their streaming cams where I took my screen captures: DHEC, UFlorida Osprey Nest, and Cornell Bird Lab and RTH.