Hey Chicklets!
Sorry for the delay in answering your last three questions, it has been very busy here!
So, about peregrine feathers. When the chicks hatch, they have some white feathers called down, not very many because they are very little chicks and their parents will be keeping them warm for the first little while.
When the chicks are 10-12 days old, they don't need their parents to keep them warm all the time now, just when it gets windy or cold or if it's raining like it has been this year for Hurricane and Brooklyn and the two chicks in Brandon. At 10-12 days old, they look like they have outgrown their clothes, you can see pink on their knees and on their "bottoms". That means its time for them to grow another coat of white, fluffy down feathers that will help to keep them warm and dry now that they are growing so big that Mum and Dad can't sit on them completely!
By the time the chicks are 18-21 days old (that's when we band the chicks), you can see little spots of black around their eyes and on where their tail and wing feathers will be, and those are their grown-up feathers. These grown up feathers are brown and gold and they will keep them for one year and then they will get black and white feathers like their Mum and Dad. The brown and gold feathers are very important though - they are longer and stronger than their Mum's and Dad's feathers because the chicks are going to have fly a very long way during the winter and they aren't as smart or strong as their parents, so the brown and gold feathers help them out during this first year. By the time they have feathers like their parents, they will be very good hunters and will have flown thousands and thousands of kilometers all the way down to Central and South American and back again, so they won't need the brown and gold feathers anymore.
