Okay, lunch time which means it is time for a story ...
Once upon a time (June 14), in a galaxy a long way away from the Radisson, there were the cutest four wookies, oops, sorry peregrine chicks who had a visit from stormtroopers with pails, oops, Dennis and I. Well just me, Dennis was making goo-goo eyes at his girlfriend Joli yet again. Actually, Joli was being very cooperative from Dennis' standpoint, she was refusing to get off the ledge as we approached her chicks so Dennis just got low behind me and kept snapping pictures as she kept snapping (figuratively in a mama peregrine kind of way) at me. She did not like the look of those big pails - whether that was because of her banding or previous banding I couldn't say but she was not pleased that we were there nor that we were about to disturb her babes. And speaking of the babes, it looked like someone had dropped white piles of cotton candy from a great height - imagine a war zone with fuzzy white bodies sprawled out seemingly lifeless. They were fine of course, just the polar opposite of the Radisson chicks - their dad Hart's genes maybe? Certainly not Joli's on this particular day.
Anywho, took just a couple of minutes to scoop the little fuzzballs up, place them in the pails and take them inside - Joli squawking all the time and Hart doing a not bad job at trying to scare us off. Nothing like Cowboy of course but the boy is doing a not bad job of imitating is grandpa Trey. So off we all toddled back inside so the chicks could make the acquaintance of Dr Bob and his oh-so-pretty collection of legbands.
They were lovely little chicks - very polite, only a little bit of grabbing (mostly they grabbed themselves a foot or a wing a couple of times) and a very little bit of squawking but nothing like the din their cousins at the Radisson had subjected. I think I mentioned before that it was like being in a parallel universe where everything was opposite. They were lovely guests, let us measure their feet and get bands on with no fuss at all, often they just sat in my hand with their feet hanging down while they glared at us.
There were three males and one female, all of the birds here much smaller in the hand than at the Radisson, but the males were about the same weight it seemed to me but the Radisson females were ginormous in comparison with the female here. All very healthy chicks (though Bob says he saw a bug on one of them) - at least two of the four had very engorged crops - so engorged in fact that when we were banding them (they were males) as I was holding them in my hand, the crop got moved around to the side of their necks and it looked from the back like they had growths on their necks!! Took me a minute to realize that because they are so much smaller, holding them as I was their crop was off to one side a bit. Think second chin or neck waddles on a human and you can sort of visualize how they can move - but only when they have food in there, empty and it sits below the feathers. Very cool actually. As I said, they were lovely little banding guests and no one regurgitated on us and only one decided to illustrate his displeasure with a little poop-art in his pail (easy cleaning - yet another reason for the pails).
Once the bling was on and Dennis had taken pictures for his files (cute chicks) and ours (band numbers), it was time for the chicks' return to whence they had come and the end of their second rite of passage (first was surviving past to banding age). Back out we went, Dennis flirting with Joli again, me doing all the work
. Chicks went back in a corner, in a pile for comfort and after a couple of parting family group photos, we pretended, for Joli's sake, that we had been driven off her nest ledge by her terrifying presence. Door closed and locked behind us there was only a bit of packing up to do and off we went in search of cold water and hot coffee, another job well done.
Many thanks to Dr Bob for coming into town to band with us and to Dennis for distracting Joli with Wowzer! Many thanks also to the folks at the Logan nestsite for their support, interest, help and discretion.
