McKenzie Seeds - 2017 / Sol & Hurricane

[RCF]

The first day we saw Hurricane she and Sol were already getting down to business.    I do believe they have eggs and are now incubating them.

 

[RCF]

April 8, 2017

Sol is back but the female that was here is not banded.     They harassed the ravens a bit but really never bothered them much. The female would dive bomb a fake owl that someone put up on another building to keep the pigeons away.  We found this very amusing! 

Anyway Sol and the unbanded female were doing what peregrines do for three days. The next day April 12th, Hurricane was here and the other female was gone. When we saw Hurricane that day she didn't look like she had any feathers out of place. So not sure if there was a fight between Hurricane and the unbanded female or not.  This is the same day Tracy and Dennis came to empty the sticks out of nest box.



Unbanded female

   

Hurricane

[RCF]

Earlier in the year we had noticed that ravens had tried to build a nest at the very top of the clock tower. I would imagine it would be way too windy for that. On April 7th I noticed the peregrines nest box was full of sticks and twigs.  The ravens abandoned that probably because they couldn't get in after filling it up.     Anyway the ravens are still nesting on the opposite side of the McKenzie building on one of the fire escapes. They also have three chicks which are almost old enough to fledge.

 

 

[RCF]

On April 8th we saw two peregrines at the McKenzie building. The day before that on April 7th we saw a pair of peregrines out at the Tower Nest.  They were harassing ravens that were trying to nest on one of the stacks.  We went back the next day and have been checking periodically and have not seen another peregrine out there since. 

So we figured that the birds we saw at the Tower were more than likely the peregrines we saw at the McKenzie building on April 8th.

 

[The Peregrine Chick]

Heard from RCF and Brandon is still a peregrine-less but as she reminded me, the Brandon birds tend not to return until the first week in April.  Smart bird obviously.  Right now it is 6C but feels like 0C because the wind is gusting from 40 to 60 kph.  Looking at the longer-term forecast, the temps in the first week of April are supposed to be (and feel) between 8-14C - whoo hoo.  Only good thing about today's less than nice weather to be out hunting for peregrines (hard to photograph in this kind of wind!!) is that the wind is from the south.  Tomorrow too, so who knows who might turn up in the next couple of days.  In the meantime, RCF will be keeping an eye out/open for our first returnees out in Brandon.