Princess sure behaves like a little darling mother! She reminds me very much of Tweetybird's Grandma!! Love the way she talks to her little flufflings!! Instead of cuddling her little ones, she fluffle-ups to them!
Boy-o-boy has she got you fooled RaptorGal
That is one mean mama! "Darling" has never been a word I have associated with this bird - and though she's a Gramma a few times over, think the Queen from Aliens (the second movie in the series!!) There's a reason there was blood all over the outside-nestbox-cam earlier this year, she beat the dickens out of Ms Hanky-Panky before sending her on her way. And its not the first time she's done it, though it seems to be the first time she's left evidence behind.
Seriously though, try not to anthropomorphize too much about peregrine behaviour. Princess is gentle with her chicks and we have all seen her go above and beyond to protect her young from everything/anything including torrential rain. However, if one of her daughters were to turn up next spring vying for the Radisson territory, Princess would do the same thing she did to Ms Hanky-Panky. And who knows, we had a black banded female at the nestbox right before migration (after Sandy left), that could have been one of Princess' girls and she could have been Ms H-P this spring, we just don't know. So appreciate her for her devotion, admire her patience (at the moment) and enjoy her for her ability to kill dinner and then feed it ever so carefully to her chicks, but don't forget this is an specialized, apex predator that has fought its way back from the edge of extinction in this country not by being cute but rather by being a peregrine through and through.
