The overnight period was seasonably cool followed by a rapid daytime warmup. Temps were in the high 60’s by late morning and reached the high 70’s by midafternoon. Astrid spent much of the overnight out on the long perch. Brooding is not as necessary with chicks of this age. Throughout the night (and much of the day) the nestlings remained huddled in the west corner of the nest box. This wasn’t conducive for optimal viewing. In fact from one of the box views, you couldn’t see them at all. Seaking of our cameras. My camera feeds shut down sometime after midnight so it’s possible I missed out on a feeding. What I do know is that Ares brought food to the box at 3:11 AM. Astrid handled the feeding. He was back twenty minutes later with more food. Astrid was still inside the box at that time. She took the second course and fed doled it out to the chicks. At 5:50 the falcons did an old-fashioned switch – Ares came in and Astrid left. The next feeding happened at 8:15. Ares brought the food and Astrid served it to the chicks. It was a good-sized meal and it took a while for Astrid to get through it. At 10:29 Ares brought in more prey. Astrid took it and fed the chicks. Once again, they were all scrunched up in the corner where we couldn’t see them well. At 11:00 Astrid was on the crossperch. She eventually moved over to the east veranda. Ares came into the box to do a chick check at 11:18. At that time A&A had a loud conversation. Following that he moved onto the long perch. They both left the box at noon.
At 12:15 PM Ares brought food to Astrid on the east veranda. She took it into the box to pluck. A feeding followed. At 1:23 falcon alarm calls were heard, but we don’t know what the circumstances were that provoked it. At 1:34 Ares landed on the crossperch to do a chick check. At 2:22 Astrid was on the steeple and Ares was seen flying around the State Building. At 2:52 the nestlings were alone – an increasingly common condition. We noticed that two of them had moved out of the west corner. Astrid was back at 3:13. Twenty minutes later she was in the box shading the chicks. They were squealing and seemed uncomfortable. At 3:47 Astrid was out and Ares came in for a visit. By then all three chicks had made their way over to the east corner of the box. Ares was shading them at 4:00 PM. The parents switched shading duties at around 4:15. At 5:43 Astrid came to the box with food. One of the chicks scrambled over to join the other two in the chow line. The smallest nestling waited until the others were full before asking for its share. At 6:52 PM it was feeding time again. The prey was a Blue Jay and Astrid was serving it out with gusto. The nestlings rallied and all seemed to consume a great deal. Their crops were getting quite huge. At 7:24 Ares returned to the nest with yet another meal. Astrid took it and began trying to interest the nestlings in having some. The chicks were pretty well packed at this point, but two of them did manage to fit a little more in. Soon all were food trunk and toppled over. Astrid flew out with the leftovers and presumably stored them somewhere. At 8:05 Astrid was on the steeple perch and one half our later she came over to the crossperch. How long will de stay there… we couldn’t possibly know that
