This season’s nestlings have received names. Thanks to all that contributed. In the Utica nest the female is Kara and the male is Percy. The two males in the Little Falls nest are Thunder and Bolt.
The overnight was seasonably warm with temperatures in the low 60’s. By day the temp rose to about 70 degrees. It was windy and partly cloudy for most of the day. Astrid was at the nest area for part of the night. There were no overnight feedings. Ares came to the east veranda at 4:10 AM. Astrid probably thought he brought prey. But when she came up to him, he floated back into the canyon. At about 4:40 Astrid was rummaging around in the box for scraps she could feed out, but she couldn’t find anything. She then moved out onto the crossperch. Ares was on the State Building at that time. At 5:40 Ares arrived on the east veranda with a Yellow-billed Cuckoo in his talons. Astrid scrambled over to take it. She flew in a wide circle around the canyon before coming into the box with it. For about three minutes, Astrid fed it out to the chicks and then abruptly left taking what remained of the meal away with her. It’s a fact that she doesn’t like to feed cuckoos to the nestlings. She will give them some but usually holds off on serving out the entire thing. Why is this? We speculate that it has to do with the cuckoo’s diet which is largely made up of tent caterpillars. The caterpillars have poisonous hairs on their bodies which dissuades most birds from eating them. As it happens, cuckoos have a taste for them, and have a tolerance of the caterpillar’s toxins. We think that the toxic caterpillars have the effect of flavoring the cuckoo’s meat and that’s why Astrid objects to them. At 5:56 Astrid was on the steeple and Ares on the State Building. Every time one of the parents moved the chicks would squeal in response. At 7:09 Ares came to the box. He hopped inside and tried to interest the chicks in taking some food scraps from him. They weren’t interested. At 8:10 Astrid was up on the roof of the nestbox. At 8:17 Ares screeched through the canyon. Ten minutes later Ares brought prey to the east veranda. When Astrid tried to take it they dropped it and both parents dove down after it. Astrid returned to the crossperch, and Ares brought the recovered food to the west veranda. That time they exchanged it successfully and Astrid went into the box to do the feeding. The feeding lasted about ten minutes. At 9:27 Ares brought another meal to the nest. Astrid grabbed it and handled the feeding.
At 10:24 PM Astrid was giving cackle-type alarm calls; the warnings were in reaction to some non-falcon raptor or vulture traversing the canyon. At 10:34 Ares screeched over to the nestbox. The Percy and Kara rushed over to him squealing in his face. He retreated to the crossperch and then left. At 11:02 we noticed that Astrid had been tucked in on the east veranda. At 12:04 PM Astrid moved to the east veranda from the State Building. At 12:22 Percy was picking at some round scrap of prey on the floor of the box. We couldn’t be sure what it was exactly. At 12:23 Ares brought a Black-billed Cuckoo to the nest area. Astrid took it and began a feeding session. Just like the last time, at only five minutes into the feeling, Astrid abruptly picked up the leftovers and flew out of the nest. Again, we believe this is cuckoo related. As we’ve related in this blog before, Astrid loathes cuckoo flesh, and doesn’t want to give much of it to her chicks. At 1:22 Kara and Percy were both laying up against the lip of the box and peering out into the canyon. Both adults came to the nest at 2:22, but then Astrid left immediately. Likely she thought Ares had prey. He left seconds later. At 3:45 one of the chicks was squealing and doing a lot of wing flapping. A parent stopped over for a chick check at 4:10. At 4:51 Astrid came to the box with prey – we think it was a Mourning Dove, already processed. Kara was in line to be fed first. At a few minutes in, Percy tried taking a bite of the meal on his own. Percy then got in line and Astrid started feeding him. Kara wandered over to the opposite corner. A minute later Astrid followed her over and fed her at her new location. Astrid was out by 5:06. She then came back to do a chick check only five minutes later. Ares came in next. He looked around on the floor of the nest for scraps of food he could feed to the chicks, but he couldn’t come up with anything – at least not before Kara chased him out. At 5:16 Astrid was perched on a light pole on the roof of the Adirondack Bank. That was unusual for her. She then spent the next couple of hours being annoyed about people in the office adjacent to the nestbox. She did some hazing and lots of glaring into windows from the roof of the box. At 7:12 Ares came to the east veranda with food, but Astrid was so occupied with staring at the office that she didn’t come to take it. Ares flew off with the meal and presumably stored it. Ares was on the steeple a few minutes later, but he wasn’t there for long. A little later he was on the State Building. Astrid continued to glare at the office window until long after all the office workers had gone home. Before 9:00 PM The chicks had a spurt of activity. Both did some wing flapping; Kara tried to bring up a pellet. Meanwhile Ares was on the State Building and Astrid was still monitoring the office window. Goodnight falcons.
Love the names!!❤️