Holy macaroni, 5000, how did that happen? But thank you Jo.
Ok, so here comes the longer version. I got there about 5:15 and Des was already there. No birdies to be seen, but it sure didn't take long. Flap, flap, out to the ledge, back to the box. After about an hour, off goes Des to get a coffee, and then Dennis rolls up. Kids put on a magnificent display of wingercising and Dennis of course had his camera glued to his face.
Des came back, we were standing there watching and over comes an adult to the nestbox. It left very quickly and went over to the Manitoba Hydro building and was sitting on the top of the b. Dennis yells "there he goes" and, boy did he go. He was trying to get to his parent and flew over the Rogers building and then tried to land on the windows of the Hydro building. Needless to say, he wasn't successful and he flapped on the way down as opposed to dive bombing. We knew he likely wouldn't have hurt himself, but now we had to find him.
Des was checking some streets and Dennis and I went to the hydro bldg to see if he was walking on the ground there. Nope, no luck. There's a parkade across the street, about 7 levels high and up we go to the top of it. Looked and looked, nope no luck. I was just passing by the now famous roof and Dennis said " You're going to walk right by him, there he is" and sure enough there he was. ( He will never let me live that one down )
Des found us, Kinderchick and Jazzerkin found us and we watched and watched. Mr White was rather wet from a small pool of water on the lower level of the roof, but looked fine.
Called Tracy and she said that he'd be fine, just keep an eye on him. So we did.
Kinderchick went down to find Susha and brought her back and now there was a bunch of us watching.
Dennis called a friend and he brought a ladder and Dennis climbed up and got some wonderful pictures. Mr. White seemed very curious about Dennis and kept moving closer and closer to him.
There are 2 or 3 levels to this roof and the birdie was not being very sucessful flying up. It's not a wide roof, so there was no way for him to launch.
So called Tracy and now she's on her way. She got there shortly and Dennis went up the ladder again, sweater and bucket in hand to try and capture the escapee. It was almost comical how the bird would go behind the A/C unit as Dennis was coming around the other way. After about 5 or 6 minutes of this, Mr White bolted and flew to the MTS Centre, where we left him. It's a much better spot for him to get back to the nest box, much more open and lots of edges where he can take off from. He's about 3-4 stories up and very safe there.
So that's the story, all in all, about 6-7 hours of watching and watching.
Great to have company this morning, thanks ladies and Dennis.
