10 Mar 23 — fun interlude
A bit wet and windy on the ledge today… Oops Tom!
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8 Mar 23
With such a wet and cold day (and night) Tom and Azina have covered the eggs pretty much non stop. Tom came in at 4am for a first shift of nearly 3 1/2 hours! (I guess he wanted to shelter from the rain/snow 😉 )
Check the first two shots of Tom and Azina side by side at the entrance of the nest box. I don’t often to get to have them so close and cooperating to give such good comparative shots. Tom’s legs, cere and eye rings are orange whereas Azina’s are yellow. His chest is white and lightly speckled, hers looks darker with her big dark spots. His back is slate grey, hers is blacker.
9 May 23 — Day 28
Happy 4 weeks birthday to Chick #1!
I forgot to mention yesterday that it was starting to mantle prey after grabbing it from a parent. It’s done it again twice today. 😉
Chick #1 mantling prey
It’s also been ‘weird’ and sleeping sitting up on its own on the ledge while its siblings were pancaked in the nest box. I don’t remember a chick doing that before.
Chick #3 sleeping sitting up on the ledge
It rained all night but the day was dry so they went out to exercise a few times but they spent most of their time inside.
Pancakes
They were fed five times, four times by Azina and once by Tom. All feeds lasted around 25 minutes and all feeds consisted of pigeon.
Chick #3 has now caught up with its siblings in size; no more tiny one in the middle. And it looks like it’s growing bigger, bigger than Chick #1 for sure. It could be all the down giving a false impression but probably not…
Chicks #2, #1 and #3 from left to right
The chicks will be ringed on Friday morning.Shots for today:
24 Apr 23 — Day 13
Quite different to yesterday. Colder and wetter so Azina has brooded the chicks for most of the day and when she wasn’t then Tom did it. Though he’s struggling a fair bit to fit them all, and so is Azina to be fair 😉
Azina brooding the chicks
Which means that pretty much the only times they could flap their wings were during feeds and they did that a lot.
Tom feeding the chicks – Feeds often time to do some flapping
There were 6 feeds today, one by Tom. Mostly pigeon on the menu with a bit of Starling.
One thing I noticed today and that’s thanks to the 4 day gap between the chicks. When they hatch their feet are pink. When they fledge they’re pale yellow. On the shots where you can see that the feet of the older ones have started to turn yellow when they’re next those of the younger one. Because it’s a very subtle change I’d never noticed that before, and also because we’ve not had such big gaps before (especially with single chicks! 😉 )
Tom feeding the chicks Shots for today:
15 May 23 — Day 34
The chicks spent part of the night on the ledge, until it started raining and they took refuge in the box.
We went to ring the chicks this morning with the thought that we would assess Chick #3’s condition and act accordingly.
Chick #2 weighed in at 750g, which is a good weight for a young male. He was fitted with an orange ring with code P6T.
Chick #3 weighed in at 760g, which is very low for a young female. And she felt thin. There were plaques in her throat, which are signs of frounce, and explained why she had difficulty swallowing food. It was then decided to remove her from the ledge and to take her to Wildlife Aid (I had contacted them previously to check that we could).
I put her in my cat basket (the same I’ve used at FledgeWatch) covered with a blanket and drove her there. They quickly admitted her. I was quite relieved when they replied to my tweet and said they’d started her treatment. She is far from out of the woods yet but she’s been given a chance.Back a the hospital P6T was in shock for a while but finally settled down around 12:30 and pancaked for a few hours. He woke up around 4:15pm, went out and found some food Azina had cached earlier to feed himself. He jumped on the wall at 4:48pm and has been there the whole time since apart from about a minute. It’s past 9pm as I’m typing this and he’s still there. He’s sat, flapped, preened on there. He’s walked it from one end to the other a couple of times. He even had dinner on it when at long last Azina brought him food and he had his first and only feed of the day. He seems very comfortable on it and has even sat on the outside edge.
I’m sure you’ll agree with me that P6T is turning into a stunning dark young Peregrine!
You can donate to Wildlife Aid to help with the cost of taking care of Chick #3.
Today’s shots:
26 Mar 23 — Days I-15 to I-17
We have now reached the half way point 🙂
Here are a few shots from the last three days including some of the quite dramatic skies we had on Friday when it was clear and sunny over the hospital but very dark and raining just North (I even heard some thunder over Kensington at that time). And two shots of the boat races as they pass Hammersmith Bridge as viewed from the Peregrine nest ledge.
Tom has been doing shorter days of incubation, a mixture again of him not turning up and Azina refusing him. She ended up doing a shift of around 20 hours overnight as she’d started it early afternoon and Tom didn’t relieve her until almost 11 this morning.21 Apr 23 — Day 10
The two oldest chicks are getting to the age where they can thermoregulate and so the chicks may be left on their own for longer periods from now on. Tom hasn’t tried brooding them at all today. And they were left alone for half an hour early afternoon.
Tom came in early and waited for eight minutes before Azina moved on but it doesn’t look like they did much chatting this time.
Tom standing waiting for Azina to move (she did after eight minutes) The chicks had six feeds today, some lasting quite long. On the menu only pigeon today.
The youngest chick missed out on the second feed. I guess it wasn’t hungry. It caught up at the next one and got a private feed for a while by again separating itself from its siblings. It joined them back by itself this time.
Azina feeding the chicks Tom spent a fair bit of time perched by the ledge today.
Tom by the ledge. He’s put his tutu on 😉 Shots for today:
