The bird at the Bleachers is Jules and she is not happy with us (the Project). We stole her kids late last evening and she won't be getting them back I'm afraid. We finally got access to the nestsite on Tuesday and we had to make some big decisions and make lots of arrangments within hours. Fortunately we pulled it off and the ball got rolling.
As of today, the WW chicks are 35-37 days old (they hatched on separate days) and because they are on the verge of fledging we were concerned that moving them to the same building as last year at this late date would stress them sufficiently that they would try to fledge too early which at this location is much much too dangerous. Both buildings are surrounded by heavily-used, multi-lane roads and while building 2 is safer than the nestsite.
Moving chicks is not something one just does though - they need to be old enough to handle the move banding age is a good milestone - younger than that they need to have care of some sort, foster parents or the care of a professional rehabber. Banding age is good because the chicks aren't anywhere close to thinking about flying and their parents are still very attentive so the chicks get used to the location and their parents' presence - basically they imprint on the new location as "home" and their fledging travels bring them back there. Older than banding age and you lose the time for them to imprint before they fledge. When we used to hack release chicks, we would get them just before fledging and we would hold them at the site for 10+ days to again, get them to imprint, but because they can fly at this age, you actually have to hold them in a hack box so they can't fly away before they have got their bearings. Because hack birds don't have parents to provide for them, imprinting is essential because they need to know to return to the hack site for food until they learn to hunt (which is hardwired).
The WW chicks (looks like 2 females and 1 male) are at fledging age so perhaps too old to have enough time to imprint on building 2 before taking their first flights. So, I decided to take advantage of an opportunity to hack release them at an empty hack site just outside of the City. They will be kept together and we will be making sure they imprint on their location before heading out and we are importing food from Ontario so that we can be sure they have what they need for as long as 6 weeks - usually doesn't take that long for the chicks to start hunting on their own, but we want to give them all the time they want.
Not my first choice for these three, but given our problems preventing them from nesting and then accessing them at banding age, one we believe will give them a better chance and reduce their risk of hatch-year mortality.
And for reference - all of the peregrines in North America are descendents of hack-released birds - remember the anatum species was virtually extirpated - any wild-hatched birds did not contribute significantly to the species' recovery north or south of the border. Their father, Beau, is also a hack-released bird and likely Jules is as well.
