Everyone who guessed that Mariah’s first egg would hatch on May 7, give yourselves a nice pat on the back!

It looks like the egg hatched around 7:15 this morning. In the picture above, you can see the broken egg shell, neatly opened by the eyas as it pipped its way out of the shell.

Now’s probably a good time to talk about the new eyases. Falcon hatchlings are semi-altricial. This means that for the most part, they’re unable to fend for themselves. Hatchlings don’t have enough feathers to maintain their body temperature. This ability, called thermoregulation, is very important, becuase without it, the eyases will freeze in the cold night air, and they may overheat during the day if the temperature outside gets too hot. So Mariah and Kaver will need to keep the hatchlings covered for the first seven to ten days, to protect them from the cold and the heat. That’s the reason we haven’t gotten a good look at the new falcon chick yet.

During the first days of their lives they’ll grow a thick coat of light downy feathers. After a week or so they’ll be able to regulate their body temperature well enough that the adults will be able to leave them uncovered. For now though, the new eyases will stay covered most of the time, so you’ll have to watch carefully to catch a glimpse of them!

When you do see them, their eyes will probably be closed for the first couple of days. Unlike their parents, their bills and feet range in color from light gray to light pink. They’ll get their yellow feet from their meaty diet, but that will take several weeks. They’re not strong enough to stand on their legs yet either, so they move by crawling.

In my recent article on hatching I mentioned that all the eggs should hatch within a couple of days of each other. It’s possible more will hatch today, but they should certainly all hatch within the next day or two, so keep watching! In an upcoming article we’ll talk more about feeding and some of the other behaviors you’ll see as the eyases grow.

UPDATE! FIRST LOOK AT THE EYAS

In this picture from 10:20 this morning you can see the eyas poking out from beneath Mariah’s wing. It’s looking toward the left wall, and its closed eyes and pink bill are visible along with the fine white feathers.

-Jess

After a decade of presence on the Internet, it’s no surprise that Mariah and Kaver have attracted a lot of fans. Many of the Rochester falcons’s admirers are not only crafty, but they’re willing to share their enthusiasm with the rest of the world through their own websites. Today we thought we’d take time to recognize some of our fans’ efforts to spread the word about Mariah and Kaver.

Kodak has been Mariah and Kaver’s home as long as they’ve been in Rochester. Kodak’s blog, 1000 Words, offers daily stories and tips about using photography. This week they’re featuring a couple of articles about falcons. From Baerbel Winkler, an Information Technlogy Systems Analyst at Kodak’s facility in Stuttgart, Germany, comes this dispatch about a pair of Kestrels that have taken up residence at a nest box originally installed for Peregrines to nest in. Tom Hoehn managed the Kodak Birdcam program for a decade. His post today provides a photographic retrospective of the falcons at Kodak. Be sure to keep up with the excellent posts at http://1000words.kodak.com!

Web logs, or blogs as they’re more popularly known, are a great way to keep up with the Kodak falcons. Several local falcon watchers share their observations through personal blogs. Barbara lives in nearby Webster, New York. She writes a blog about Mariah and Kaver with lots of good information and pictures from the Rochester Falconcam, as well as her own video clips, and links to many related websites. Lord Garavin’s Bird Blog is filled with reports of the falcons’ activity outside of the nest box. Check out this recent post about Mariah and Kaver’s mating activity, and browse the blog’s archives from June and July to see past years’ fledglings in action.

The Rochester Falconcam enjoys a worldwide following. In 2001, Kodak added a discussion board to the Birdcam website, allowing those fans to interact for the first time. It wasn’t long before many of these Peregrine afficianados decided to keep in touch year-round, and the Kfalconcam group at Yahoo was born in 2002. Guests can browse the messages posted by falcon fans from around the world, and if you want to get in on the conversation, becoming a member is easy! The Cleveland Museum of Natural History has a website dedicated to their very own Peregrine pair. Their discussion board is very active, and it has a section devoted to the Rochester falcons.

Among fan websites, one distinguishes itself for its sheer ingenuity. Responding to requests from falcon fans to be able to view past pictures from the cameras monitoring Mariah and Kaver’s nest box, a long-time falcon fan with the unusual name Shaky put his technical expertise to work and produced a one-of-a-kind website. Shaky’s Falconcam Archive Viewer allows visitors to review pictures from any of the Falconcam’s cameras with a few simple mouse clicks. He’s got a humorous streak, too. Check out his Shakypix for a lighthearted look at our favorite falcons!

As you can see, our fans are a creative lot, and we hope you’ll take the time to explore their websites. Want to join the fun? If you have a website or blog featuring Mariah and Kaver let us know! We’ll add it, along with all of the websites we’ve featured here, to our Fans of the Falconcam page.

-Jess