Day 3 of New Girl

Tom and Charlie have managed to do 2 ‘proper’ courtship displays inside the nest box since the last post. The season is properly started!
This was on Friday 4th January

And this was yesterday.

No visit to the nest ledge today but I saw Charlie perched on the usual perch and, this evening, she was on one of her roosting flues, as most days.

 

#atitlikeperegrines a hashtag we used for Tom and Charlie a few times over the years, and one that could be used for Tom and New Girl on Saturday: 7 times they did it on the ledge that day, including 3 within one hour (6.32, 6.49 and 7.09am)… ‘Only’ 4 times on Sunday 😉

Tom finally got his wish on Saturday when she joined him for a courtship display inside the nest box 🙂 He was so excited, bouncing all over the nest box, as she appeared on the wall by the nest box before jumping inside the box 🙂 She usually stays put where she is and doesn’t really join in.

Tom paid one of his night visits on Saturday, arriving and going inside the nest box at 3.38am and staying there until 4.51am.

Talking of night time, New Girl has been roosting on the ledge both nights but she gets fidgety at times and moves around a bit. She even spent a bit of time on top of the nest box.

She has been staying on the nest box a bit during the day as well.  I spent a couple of hours on Saturday watching her and Tom. She disappeared from sight and we were wondering where she’d gone. Turns out she’d gone onto the nest box and we couldn’t see her from the old FledgeWatch spot.

Another distinguishing feature is some rather prominent ‘whiskers’.

Tom has kept her very well fed with a good stream of Feral Pigeons.

New Girl quickly figured out the location of the ledge cache.

   

Just a few random shots…

Early afternoon on Saturday 19th January Charlie arrived on the ledge and after a short while decided to pancake on the wall of the ledge.  I find the following video interesting as it shows her settling, with a better angle than when she does this on top of the nest box as she tends to face the camera there.

She pancaked for a few minutes but got up quite quickly and moved to perch on top of the nest box instead.

 

There, she decided to pancake again and even have a bit of a snooze.

 

At 1.48pm, she suddenly got up and started bowing, I thought she was going to have a courtship display with Tom but no. Instead, Tom came and mated with her!  This has to be the earliest mating on camera for this pair. I had been wondering a few times a few days before if it was about to happen, from the way Charlie was presenting herself…