Juvenile Delinquents

Well, I was tied up with visitors and haven't peeked in on the nest in several days. Wow, the 'kids' have grown! If you are lucky enough to open the cameras to feeding time, you'll hear a horrendous noise that I can only describe as a mob of juvies pushing their way to front of a street fight. Wow, when blood is in the air they are not nice.

Things are heating up in Salt Lake City with a high of 93 yesterday - today we have a respite with a high in the mid 70's, ahhh. The weekend's expected high's back in the mid 90's will make for very toasty days down at Temple Square for the rescue team. If all goes as it should, and if 2009's experience is any indication, starting Sunday morning some of us 'towel' people will be spending time hanging out waiting for the first kid to jump.

I received a nice email from a reader today and it reminded me that I should probably talk a little bit about what it's like being a volunteer and what will happen during HELL WEEK. He was worried about what will happen when  the kids fledge, will they learn to fly ok, etc. I worried about that too in 2009 as a first time volunteer and was very happy to find out that they are well adapted to leave the nest and the parents are great teachers. Actually, there are some stressful days prior to the first leap, of watching them practice flapping wings, hopping up and down, wondering when exactly they will jump. I don't know if this is true of most fledging of Peregrines but both of the chicks fledged in the early morning in 2009, one day apart. Once one decides to go, its pretty hard to be left behind in the nest. Why are we calling it HELL WEEK? Because keeping up with two juvies was worrisome and FOUR is gonna be insane!

More on first days of flight in my next post. Leaving you with a night image of the kids waiting for dinner.

Dinner, Saturday Night

Dinner arrives at about the 50 sec mark. Sorry this is so long.

From the Ground

I am working downtown today so thought I would test blogging from my phone. Here is a picture of the nest box from below.

Colorful Birds

I thought I would share a couple of photos from a few years ago. I am not usually a birder; they almost have to land on my head for me to notice but sometimes I luck out. I saw the Western Tanager along the Fifth Water Trail to the hot springs back in 2008. Just a flash of orange and yellow, but we followed and waited and were rewarded with a good view. Only a week later, as we were hiking back down the Mt. Olympus Trail, a Lazuli Bunting landed just in front of us.

Hot Day

It was a very warm day today as you will see from this video. If any readers are interested in participating as a member of the 2011 Salt Lake City Peregrine Falcon Watchpost/Rescue Team during what we lovingly call HELL WEEK, you can call Bob Walters (801) 209-5326 or contact me for more information. It looks like the first fledge will be close to July 4. Really, having extra sets of eyes and binoculars down at Temple Square during the first week is very helpful. Any spare time you can drop down to help out is welcome. Bring water, towel, sunscreen, snack, camera, walking shoes, hat and maybe a walkie talkie.

Video

Here are a couple videos from June 5 of the tercel preening and then dinner arriving. You can really see the difference in size of the adults in the second video.

Gasp!

I opened camera 2 this morning and about had a heart attack.

I hurried to turn on camera 1 praying nothing had gone wrong :(

I don't think I remember the chicks moving to the center of the box like this until they were actually up and flapping wings in 2008. Wow, they've grown a lot over the past 5 days I've been away from the blog.

Lunchtime

I caught some video of lunch arriving.

Blog Changes

Ahh, feels good to freshen up the blog and the new updates available through Blogger are great. I've added several Peregrine nest cams from around the country in the side bar ~ organizing them with Salt Lake first and then according to when the chicks should be taking their first flights. As the nests become empty I will rotate the empty nests to the bottom. So check back often! Lots going on even while we are waiting for SLC to fledge..

The first picture shows both adults. My guess is female on rock, closest to the chicks. Dinner tonight was something large and furry. See second picture. Any guesses? Mom was gone for 10 min or more. I watched so patiently with my camera aimed at the screen. Sure enough, I looked away for two seconds and here she came, so the image is blurred.

Boise Falcon Blog

While searching the internet for information on exactly how long it will be before our FOUR take their first flights, I stumbled on a great blog Flight of the Peregrine Falcon that follows the nesting pair in Boise, Idaho (wow look at that cool building they nest on). I was so excited to find this blog! It has all sorts of great reference information. Thanks to Robin and Bob Young for featuring my blog on their blog!

So according to many sources including Robin and Bob's blog, first flights should happen around July 12 - July 16. Also known as HELL week, ha ha. More about that in my next post.