Fortunately things are going a lot better mow. The one chick left is doing fine.
NESTBOXNEWS
Nestbox News is an account of activity at a nestbox placed atop Mack-Cali Realty Corporation's 101 Hudson St., Jersey City, by biologists in the Endangered and Nongame Species Program.
We have had a difficult few days at the nest in Jersey City. Friday’s easterly winds with cold rain made for harsh weather conditions at a time when the nestlings were just 10 days old, a time when they don’t yet have a thick downy plumage. It was somewhat coincidental that we had scheduled a nest visit for Friday, with the purpose of administering medicine to ward off trichomoniasis, a pigeon-borne disease that can infect and kill young chicks. Biologists removed the four nestlings from the box and took them inside to check them over. While all were damp and somewhat subdued, one of the four seemed near-death, very cool to the touch and mostly unresponsive. We administered medication, along with small chicken pieces, to three of the nestlings, and they seemed okay. We decided to take the fourth nestling to The Raptor Trust, and we hoped he would live that long.
A couple of surprises: the youngster we took away with us began feeling better once he was warmed up in the truck. The transformation was amazing, from cold and listless to head-up and looking for food. This was an unexpected but welcome development, and, assuming he continues to thrive, we hope to return him to the nestbox in about a week.
The really sad news is that, with the continuing cold and driven rain, the female was not able to keep all three remaining nestlings warm, and one of them died by Friday evening. The female was trying valiantly to keep all of them under her wings, but even she seemed soaked by the rains. To make matters worse, viewers tuning in Saturday morning saw two dead nestlings, a second one succumbing during the night. The sun came out and the remaining chick was moving about, and the adults were feeding and brooding it, but they were also trying to brood the two dead chicks.
A decision was made to remove them so that the adults would focus their efforts on the remaining live one, and to try to identify the cause of death. Mack-Cali engineers removed the bodies for future examination, and we greatly appreciate their timely assistance and their courage in facing the defensive adults. On Sunday, the sun came out for a while in the morning, and the nestling alternated between resting, feeding, sunning and getting brooded by the adult. All seemed well.
The weather forecast for Monday seems a repeat of Friday’s harsh weather, but the adults should be able to cope with the conditions with only one young to protect. While we were there Friday, both adults were very aggressively defending the nest, and we kept our time on the roof as short as possible. We were able to see that the male is the same as previous years, with “*2/*6” on the bicolor leg band (originally banded in 2003 at the Riverside Church in Manhattan). Behaviors suggest the female is the same as well, thought we’ve never been able to read her band.
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