Big Oops Video

Thank you to Mary Ann, SkygirlBlue at Bird Cams of the World for capturing the video of the 4th bird slipping out of the nest box. http://youtu.be/fJopu_elYXs

Here she is, Bobby, resting on the sill on the north side of JSMB, very close to ground level.
She is banded and has been put up on Beehive along with #3, Sally. My SLR camera battery died this morning so all my photos are off my phone, so not the best.

Morning cam photos

These are not the best but gives a glimpse. Fledgling 3 in  last two photos above works map. Amelia on  tip of scallop, in first photo screaming for food.

Amelia waiting to be fed.

Sally on Church Office Building (COB)

Sally

Notes from July 6: If you watch the first flight video closely you will see the first fledge made it to the top of that white building on the first try. That is hard to do, she is very strong flyer for how big she is. She landed on the roof then hopped up to the ledge where she sat for an hour or more, walking east and west then heading south on the ledge. A few Lesser Finches buzzed her head a couple times. As she moved south on the building there was great worry that she would fly off into the traffic on South Temple Street. She did take off headed in that direction, everyone scrambled. She landed on a ledge down by the gardens, but high enough ledge that Bob had to get a maintenance ladder, climb up the 6 feet or so and grab her. She didn't fight. There was a mob of people who wanted to get a view so Bob took her, in the box, over to the JSMB building foyer, closed off the doors and allowed 5 or 6 people at a time to step in, look, and snap a picture before he banded her. Quickly thereafter, security escorted Bob up to the top of the Beehive and put her out on the ledge. Of course immediately she heads south on that ledge, towards traffic. Everyone scrambled over to the street but eventually she ended back over on the North side, facing the gardens and tucked into a curlee cue on the face.

There was one point when a seagull flew through the grounds and got too close to her as she sat on the admin bldg this morning. The father swooped in from the tall Eagle Gate Building and looked to about kill the gull, full attack. The gull high tailed it out of there fast. When I left, the other young were starting to hang out on the nestbox ledge again and female adult was bringing food. We never saw parents feed the first fledge though. I took time to go up to the observation deck with a tour guide and snapped pictures of the whole grounds and caught a shot of the female storing up some pigeons on the ledge outside the nestbox (maybe for easy access during the night). It was a great day. I will be back on the Square EARLY hoping to see the next one fledge in the morning. Shout out to all my friends on BCAW who let me post their videos today and tweeted updates about what was going on in the nest when I couldn't see.

Just 30 min or so after first flight.

Looking North. Nest box is to the bird's left.

The three left behind watching all the activity.

After flying along south along the west side of Admin Bldg, she lands on a sill.

Bob climbs up on a ladder to retrieve her.

Measuring and banding in JSMB vestibule.

Bob takes her up to the top of the Beehive and releases on the North side.

View of nesbox from 36 floors up. Click on any pic to see larger. Note dead pigeons on corner. Adults' food stash.

View of the Beehive on top of JSMB.

Late afternoon hang out. Three left in box.

Full view of west side of grounds. Beehive is on left on top of Joseph Smith Memorial Building. Temple is to the center of picture and a favorite destination of the falcons.

First fledge on left side of the spade shaped scroll, in the curlee cue getting shade. Click on picture to see larger. Bird is in front of red, white and blue shield.

Video of First Flight

Skygirlblue caught the first flight this morning and posted on YouTube. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6XSahTHjus

John Oligschlaeger provided these pictures of banding which happened around 11:30 after the bird flew off the Admin Bldg and landed on a sill by one of the columns. I will post photos of the capture when I get home.

First Out!!

Fist bird out 6:18. Sorry for the quality of this mobile photo.

Today's Pictures

I arrived at Temple Square around 7:15 this morning and left about 1:00 pm. There were some adult flights, with the first being both parents landing close to the nest box. Not sure if the construction that started today made them nervous but there was a phone call from one viewer saying that they felt the kids were more restless or nervous today, but that could be due to 'its time to fledge' jitters. The adults then hung out on the tall Eagle Gate Building for the rest of the morning. There was one flight into the box where an adult landed on a kids head. Not sure what happened there. Almost seemed like a message to the kid to get back in the box a bit, stop messing around. Who knows. I am including the link to the video which comes via skygirlblue on the Bird Cams Around the World website. I will be back down on the grounds early tomorrow, I certainly don't want to miss the first fledge! Gotta be soon! Make sure to follow the Twitter feed for updates.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9xLS_Rtifc&feature=player_embedded

Two adults up on scallops.

From Falcon Central

I spent 5 hours down at Temple Square with not much activity from kids or parents. One meal was brought in before 8am but it was small and only seemed to feed one or two of the young. Note: I was told that the adults beginning withholding food, partly to urge them to leave the nest but mostly to help them shed their baby weight to levels that help with flight. There were enough volunteers that I came home. It likely there will be no fledges today. I will go back in the morning. Watch the cameras early in the morning for possible first fledge. You can click on the pictures to make even larger.

The four Young of the Year

Adults watching nest from high on Eagle Gate Building

So Ready!

The big guy in the front, the one who's lost all his white, downy feathers, looks ready to go!

HELL WEEK is HERE!

If you've been watching the cams, it appears that one of the kids is about to fly the nest! All hands on deck. Looking for volunteers this week. Give Bob Walters or me a call: Bob 801-209-5326 or Liz 801-493-5932 and we will explain how you can help.

Updates from my twitter account as well http://twitter.com/LizATtheMorsel all day.

Dinner, Thursday Night plus Wing Flapping

A couple videos for your enjoyment. Video 1 is dinner arriving. Video 2 one kid practicing take off. Video 3 more wing flapping. Launch day is closing in!

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.

Four Feeding

The fourth egg hatched overnight sometime. There are now four distinct heads in the photos below.

Its going to be a busy summer!

Then There Were Three!

Welcome to beautiful Utah, where winter has lasted forever! Seriously, snow at the end of May? This was the view from my backyard this morning. This cold makes me worry for the new hatchlings. 2008 brought disaster to the nest when all the eyases died. The temps went from 95 to 30 degrees in a 24 hr period, and although Bob Walters didn't feel that was the cause, it still makes me worry.



Great news! Three of the eggs hatched this weekend ~ Saturday morning around 9:30, Sunday morning and another Sunday afternoon. I no longer see a 4th egg. Sorry for the poor captures. Still haven't found a program to get good pics from the video stream.

I see three heads in this shot!

Eggs Should Hatch this Week!

Sorry this took so long to post. Here's the latest.

April 27, 2011 update:

There are now four eggs in the nest, which is a normal clutch size. The two parents are sharing the care and incubation responsibilities.Watching Camera 2 will give you a better chance of seeing the parents and the four eggs.

We expect the eggs to hatch between May 24 and May 26 but, as always, there are no guarantees.

First reported appearance:

Egg no. 1: April 19
Egg no. 2: April 22
Egg no. 3: April 24
Egg no. 4: April 27

Egg #1

Egg #1 was layed last evening between 6:30 and 7:00. Its a little worrisome to me that when I checked this morning the egg was being ignored :(

Anyone know of a free screen capture program? For now this is what I can grab with my phone.

Welcome to 2011 Nest Season!

The cams are up and running in the old nest box! There have been sightings of both adults so fingers crossed we will have younguns this year!

http://wildlife.utah.gov/peregrine/

Happy watching!