Saturday, May 17, 2008
De Mortel banding photo's
As I wrote in my De Mortel banding post of yesterday I had the privilege to attend the banding of the 4 De Mortel eyases.
It was without a doubt the most impressive experience ever, looking into the eyes of Horus.....
Today I received the photo's that where made by Anita Zwiers.
Here is the slideshow and some seperate shots of the 2 female and 2 male eyases of De Mortel 2008:
Touching a godess...
It was without a doubt the most impressive experience ever, looking into the eyes of Horus.....
Today I received the photo's that where made by Anita Zwiers.
Here is the slideshow and some seperate shots of the 2 female and 2 male eyases of De Mortel 2008:
Touching a godess...
Zwolle: banding
Yesterday the 3 Zwolle eyases where banded. It turned out we have 3 healthy females here.
The names and bands:
Geertje- KA
Janneco- KB
Danielle- KC
Harrisburg: 16 days old
Around day 16, dark spots can be seen along the edges of the wings, indicating the growth of the flight feathers underneath the covering of down. The down on the head also begins to take on a "rougher" texture around this time.
Oberhausen
The juvi's are gone. At least they are still there but not in front of the cams anymore. They are enjoying themselves in flying and excersising. In learning the hunting skilss of which teh peregrine falcon is so famous.They will be diving and tumbling, letting themselves fall and catch a thermal. They are happy, I'm sure doig that for which they where born: being a peregrine falcon, the fastest creature of our blue homeworld.
New Yersey: great news!
May 15, 2008 The nestling that biologists removed from the nest (he was near-death due to exposure) spent the last 6 days at The Raptor Trust, and was returned to the 101 Hudson nest today. He joined his nest-mate, the only other nestling to survive last Friday’s nor’easter. The chick is actually a little larger than the one that remained in the nest, possibly due to the human attention and extra feedings. So when we are able to see both in the camera view, and they look different, figure that the larger one is the rehabilitated one.
We are not concerned about the size difference; both will be normal size as they mature and approach fledging age. The adults can easily feed two chicks, since a normal brood is 3 or 4. The loss of the other two nestlings was related to the extremely bad weather conditions at a time when the nestlings were too large for the adult to shield all of them, and before their heavy down plumage had come in. Now that the chicks are two weeks old, they have a heavier down that helps them deal with the changing weather.
Today the nestlings have been largely out of view, as they are both mobile and are choosing to stay near the back of the box, just out of camera view. However, they will move around, and when food arrives, we have the chance to see the feeding action.
Thanks to everyone for their concern over the health and well being of the nestlings. As biologists, we try to strike a balance between intervention, when essential, and knowing that nature should and will take its course. The storms this month have taken their toll on wildlife all over, and nests with young may have been the hardest-hit. Jersey City may have fared better than most. In cases of failure (because of weather, predators, disturbance, etc.) for the adults, they have to try again next year.
http://www.state.nj.us/dep/fgw/peregrinecam/index.html
Brighton Sussex Heights: 20 days old
Around day 20, some yellow/beige becomes visible in the patch behind the eye, and a distinct dark edge to the wings becomes visible as the flight feathers continue to grow in length beneath the layer of down.
ledgeteam
Nijmegen: 26 days old.
I am afraid in Nijmegen the nestbox cam is very dirty. So dirty that nothing can be seen, so we only have images of the ledgecam.
This is not soemthing that is easily fixed. It is impossible to clean the lens of course.
But the eyases are 26 days old now. It won't be long before they will start appearing in the nestbox opening and even take a step outside. We are looking forward to that indeed!
Derby Cathedral Peregrine project
The latest comments (early Saturday morning in the UK) report a failure with the main camera .
The project members think it's a problem of the hosting company, Streamdays, many of whose webcams around the country seem to have frozen around 22:50 UK time. Read all about this on the Derby Blog.
There are some great video's to watch instead over there. And I'm confident tomorrow we can enjoy the refresh and live streaming again!
http://derbyperegrines.blogspot.com/
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