In the pre-dawn gloom we caught sight of a bird in the nestbox. Given that Hart and Ella have been pretty consistently hanging out here for the last week we didn’t really give it much thought. At least until the light came up a bit more and it didn’t quite look like Hart or Ella, but then light plays a role in how light/dark birds look – their head and backs look darker and their breasts whiter, so we chalked it up to that. We were wrong and once the bird started moving around the box it was obvious that it wasn’t Hart and then of course the question became, who was this new bird? It was easy to tell it was a male and it was banded so we knew we’d eventually get a definitive answer but then a clue – a very white clue! This new male has a white band just above his beak* which is very familiar … but still we needed to read his band to confirm his identity, question was how long would it take for him to show us a little leg?
The answer was, not long. And we were right. Pip is home. Interestingly, shortly after ID’ing Pip we got a call from one of our spotters and this same morning there was, for the first time in more than a week, a bird at Logan. And just that easily, Hart abandons fair lady and moves back to Logan and likely West Winnipeg.
* technically this is the bird’s forehead and it starts where the cere ends (the yellow bit at the base of the beak). An approximate human equivalent would be bridge of nose because the white is below peregrine’s eyes rather than above the eyes like they would be on us.