Other Peregrine Projects > Australian Peregrines
NSW - Charles Sturt University - 2017 / Xavier & Diamond
The Peregrine Chick:
Not an odd fellow at all - all our males do this to a greater/lesser degree. Even young Pip learned the trick early on. ;D. Ivy also used to bring in twice as much food as the chicks needed and as they were dropping into food comas Princess would leave with the leftovers to eat elsewhere.
burdi:
Update Published 8 September, 2017 | By Cilla Kinross
Good boy, or odd chap?
Got back from Brisbane late Tuesday and just catching up with our pair. I’ve noticed that Xavier has stopped bringing in much food and is keen to help out with the incubation (something previous males were not that keen to do usually, especially with three eggs). He even arrived at one time having clearly just made a kill, with blood on his feet. That seems a bit cheeky, or is he stashing the prey for Diamond (see below)?
And he’s hanging about waiting for her to move so he can take over (at least I assume that’s what he’s up to….)….often he’s reluctant to move when she returns from her excursion. He seems very comfortable and is usually not having problems settling over the three eggs and on one occasion he stayed almost motionless incubating for four hours while Diamond was off gallivanting about, presumably hunting for herself.
On one occasion, Diamond left with a prey (starling) that Xavier did bring – she then returned in four minutes minus prey. That’s odd. She can’t have plucked and eaten it in that time, so I can only assume it was either stashed in a tree or she dropped it and couldn’t find it. It was early in the morning so she must have been hungry. I’m going to try and find some time next week to have a look around the park as I think there must be a stash in the trees. It will be a bit like the proverbial needle unless I get lucky. Usually they use the box, but Xavier has seemed reluctant to do this.
The night light has arrived, but needs some mechanical adjustment as the stalk is too short. Scott is working on this and we should have light at night again early next week.
Source http://www.gumtreecs.com.au/wordpress/
Photos and videos can be found in the above link.
burdi:
Cilla also wonders if Xavier has been stashing his food and will try to have a look around the park. Hope she’s able to spot something!
This morning, Xavier took over incubation at 0722 hrs, but they’ve switched again since then (which I didn’t see), and Diamond is currently on the eggs.
burdi:
Update Published 8 September, 2017 | By Scott Banks
Night lighting progress
The good news is the new infrared illuminator has finally arrived, but the bad news is we can’t fit it until this weekend. A climb was attempted yesterday to check unit mounting etc and the current hole, where the 10 year old camera sits, is too high for the new IR unit, so a higher block needs to be built, and for the sake of speed and choreography a g-clamp will be used to fit the IR unit block to the ledge. Diamond seemed little phased yesterday with the deliberately planned noise behind the box but refused to leave her post. We have a piece of board that can go across the open camera hole while swapping the units across, so she’ll definitely hear us but will be spared the horror of seeing our human faces!
Hopefully tomorrow, Saturday, will see the IR unit fitted and working, and then we wait for night to see whether it’s too bright or not bright enough. It can shine to 20 metres in the darkness so we may melt the peregrines! Apologies to Diamond for the disturbance but it will be necessary, and apologies to our viewers. The two HD cameras can handle around .0001 lux (which is VERY, very dark) but the box isn’t lit by any ambient light at all so an IR unit is necessary.
http://www.gumtreecs.com.au/wordpress/
burdi:
Xavier returned at 0925 hrs! I didn’t see any food, though I do suspect a cache. Hopefully Cilla will soon have an update for us.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version