Hi Skye & Kinderchick!
Glad you were able to watch the banding yesterday - we were sorry to be a bit late, but we had to fix up the new nestbox for the Brandon chicks and it took a bit longer than we planned. We also had to get all the banding stuff ready, and the camera, and then get the ladder up to get the chicks down, whew, lots of work to do before we even got around to banding the chicks!
My hands got poked just a little bit by the talons, but only one time did it break the skin and that was when I was holding one foot while Dr Bob was putting the band on the other foot. The first little male wanted to hold on tight in the beginning so I let him. Almost can't see it now, but I could see it yesterday. Mostly I only get one or two little pokes - a bit like when a kitten grabs hold with his claws. Even though the peregrine chick has long talons, it is really only the sharp point at the end that pokes me and so its only a little poke. The peregrine chicks aren't trying to hurt me, they just need to grab hold of something because they are a little scared of all the people. So I let them grab hold of me and we band them as quick as we can and then they go back to their Mum and Dad and they aren't scared any more.
As for the letters and numbers. On the first band we put on, its all numbers on those bands and they are given to us by the Bird Banding Lab (BBL). All the birds that get banded with BBL bands, have a number on their silver band that is just for them - its like having a name with numbers and a name that none one else has. That's how folks can tell who a bird is and where it came from and who banded it. The other band, the coloured band, we put on because we can't see the numbers on the BBL band, there are too many numbers and they are too small. So we put a coloured band on with larger, easier to read numbers and letters and then we can read them on webcams, with binoculars or with spotting scopes (like a telescope). A band with black on it means that the bird was hatched in a wild nest like ours. An all red band means it was hatched in captivity and released into the wild. As for the letters and numbers, they too are unique for each bird and because there are many more peregrines than there used to be, the Canadian Wildlife Service (who help us), they keep track of all the letters and numbers on the coloured bands and they send us bands when we need them and we tell them when we have put them on peregrine chicks.
As for the names, we hope to have them named by the end of the day - and we will post the names here on the Forum and on the CBC Manitoba Falcon Cam page as well.
And I'm very glad you could understand what I was trying to tell you - we forgot to bring a felt pen and a clipboard to right down what the gender of the chicks were/are like we did for the Radisson banding!
Have a great summer Skye!
The Peregrine Chick
