Rochester: Diamante has fledged

The Falcon watch reports that a third juvie had fledged yesterday. Diamante the little male with the red band took off for the first time. Mariah and Kaver wher eseen flying with 3 juvies. Seneca is still in the nestbox and Quest in the playpen so it was clear this was Diamante.
Zephyr and Suzie are flying a lot and stay out together at the High Falls Stack.
I have no reports about today. After all it is 6 hours later in the Netherlands when I write this than Rochester.
Seneca is still in the nestbox. I have seen Mariah a few times trying to talk her out, but she still stays put. Mariah is bringing her food. In the afternoon Zephyr suddenly landed on the nestbox to get some leftovers of the prey Seneca has.

http://www.rfalconcam.com/falconwatch/

And do visit the Blog of Peregrinations to enjoy the report and the amazing photo's of the flying actions of Zephyr and Suzie with Kaver and Mariah.

Peregrinations: Four Talons, Two Lunches, and Wings

Derby: a foggy day in Derby Town

Foggy, wet and dense. Juvies with plucky feathers did not feel like showing themselves to much. They stayed in their hidingplaces.
It was not until after 4 when the fog finally disappeared. And there they where, our juvies.
And they stayed activ in front of both cams.
Both parents landed together at the nestsite while the kids where having fun with the puddingcam on top until late this evening.

http://derbyperegrines.blogspot.com/

And do visit the Derby Photo Blog of Jon Salloway. He has amazing photo's of the Derby peregrines.:
http://derby-peregrines.blogspot.com/

Nijmegen

De Mortel: 2 juvies and a prey

Two juvies in front of the webcam with prey. Watch the videos:

Part 1



Part 2



Part 3



Part 4

Xcell Allen S. King Plant

They are so sweet these 2. Look at them. At the crack of dawn they step out of the nestbox. I love them when they are in this stage of transformation.

Eemsmond: still breeding.

This is unique behaviour in Eemsmond. On March 12 the Eemsmond female laid her first egg. On March 15, 17 and 19 she laid the eggs 2, 3 and 4. She started breeding after she had laid the 3th egg. The first days of breeding where in cold and snowy wheather. But they where sheltered by a warm nestbox. 33 days after she started breeding the first egg should have hatched, that was around April 20. Everywhere in the Nerherlands eggs hatched around that date, but not in Eemsmond.
First we thought, give her a few days more, but still no hatch.





If eggs don't hatch within 5-7 days after the estimated date they won't anymore.
In these cases, the couple goes on breeding. From other cases I know they leave after 40-45 days to try again somewhere else. Or just stop breeding and leave.
But not this Eemsmondcouple. They are still breeding. And do not seem to be bothered by it. They have adjusted to this way of life, and take turns in keeping their eggs warm.





Many people have mailed me about this. How sad and pity these birds. Have asked to intervene. But please do not project your own psyche and emotions on these birds. The Peregrine falcon is one of the most intelligent birds there are. But they lack the ability to think ahead, to draw conclusions, to be aware of this being sad.
The drama in Richmond for instance was a total different thing. She saw how her eyases died, where sick, where dead in the shell. She was very very aware of the death of her eyases. And that is most stressful thing that can happen to a peregrine falcon. Broken eggs, death eyases are very disturbing and do evoke a behavioural reaction that we could almost qualify as emotions. Just recall the Richmond female. Her behaviour has made a big impression on me. I did feel a deep compassion for her.





But the Eemsmond couple are not stressed. They just behave as they should when there are eggs. They seem totally relaxed.
It will end. Their hormone level will change and they will leave. They do leave the eggs for a few hours more and more in the past days.
After they have the WSN will collect the eggs for scientific research.

Columbus Ohio: 39 days old

Ready to fledge.
(b/g) S47 Justice (female)
b/g S73 Mistic (female)
b/g C65 Columbus (male)
b/g C66 Boomer (male) are fully grown and won't be round very long anymore at the ledge. Among these 4 beauties is the one who is a biological miracle. Her egg was laid and had to wait 10 days in cold and heat, in snow and rain until joined by eggs 2, 3 and 4. No one gave this egg a chance of hatching. But it did. She, Justice is healthy and strong and will fledge.

Juvies learn to fly with a little help from their ancestors

In the past weeks we have watched eyases grow up to juvies. We have seen how their body changes and small armlike extremities become wings.
For many days the juvies hop flap along the nestledge, exercising those wings and train their flightmuscles before that special moment of first flight.

Most of them have first flights however that end up on the street or on the ground of the area the nestbox is high above situated. Or in a tree. Flying is not as easy as it seems. It has to be learned. Most of them manage within a few days to fly without any problems.
All creatures on our bleu Homeworld are part of a collective consciousness. Not only humans, but animal and plantspirit as well! For sure that is. In the collective conscious of birds lies the ability to fly. The history and memory of thousands of years of flying must be part of the neural pathways in the bird brain. I always have been convinced of this.
Recently I came across an article about Dr. Jim Stone.

Dr Jim Stone of the University of Sheffield has discovered that the reason birds learn to fly so easily is because latent memories may have been left behind by their ancestors.

It is widely known that birds learn to fly through practice, gradually refining their innate ability into a finely tuned skill. However, according to Dr Jim Stone from the University of Sheffield´s Department of Psychology, these skills may be easy to refine because of a genetically specified latent memory for flying.

Dr Stone used simple models of brains called artificial neural networks and computer simulations to test his theory. He discovered that learning in previous generations indirectly induces the formation of a latent memory in the current generation and therefore decreases the amount of learning required. These effects are especially pronounced if there is a large biological 'fitness cost' to learning, where biological fitness is measured in terms of the number of offspring each individual has.

The beneficial effects of learning also depend on the unusual form of information storage in neural networks. Unlike computers, which store each item of information in a specific location in the computer's memory chip, neural networks store each item distributed over many neuronal connections. If information is stored in this way then evolution is accelerated, explaining how complex motor skills, such as nest building and hunting skills, are acquired by a combination of innate ability and learning over many generations.

Dr Stone said: "This new theory has its roots in ideas proposed by James Baldwin in 1896, who made the counter-intuitive argument that learning within each generation could guide evolution of innate behaviour over future generations. Baldwin was right, but in ways more subtle than he could have imagined because concepts such as artificial neural networks and distributed representations were not known in his time."

Photos courtesy of Cleve Nash:

http://www.clevenash.com/docs/peregrinefalcons.html

X-Cell: Black Dog