The peregrine falcons are incubating their four eggs in a sheltered wooden nest box on the edge of the Radisson Hotel’s roof.
The Radisson Hotel's peregrine falcons have moved on up -- as the Jeffersons would say -- to a deluxe apartment in the sky.
After two years of stubbornly nesting on a weather-battered ledge above Portage Avenue, the raptors are incubating four eggs in the peregrine penthouse -- a sheltered wooden nest box on the edge of the downtown hotel's roof.
"It's wonderful," said a relieved Tracy Maconachie, the conservation biologist who co-ordinates Manitoba's Peregrine Falcon Recovery Project, aimed at re-establishing a wild population of the endangered birds.
The chicks are expected to start hatching between May 17 and 21, just before the long weekend.
The streaming CBC/Shaw "falcon cam" that lets fans around the world watch the nesting action online will go live this Wednesday morning (check
www.species-at-risk.mb.ca/pefa for links).
Last year's webcam page generated more than one million page views in its first month. Fans follow the birds' progress from as far away as China, New Zealand, South Africa, Israel, Norway and Saudi Arabia.
This year's camera is built into the half-covered nest box, which is 30 storeys up on the west side of the hotel. At least one additional camera will show the ledge area once the chicks get ready to fly.
The Radisson has been a peregrine nesting site since 1989. Last year's three chicks got a survival boost from a plastic nest tray, which helped keep them dry and less wind-battered on the exposed 13th-storey ledge.
They learned to fly and hunt, and were last seen heading for their first winter vacation, somewhere like Mexico or Cuba. They have leg bands and may be identified when they mate at the age of two or three.
In 2008, it was a much sadder story when three chicks died in a severe June rainstorm on the ledge. I remember that sad story!
What made the parents go for more shelter this spring? Like a hotelier upgrading to higher thread-count sheets, Maconachie changed the pea gravel in the nearly one-metre-by-one-metre box to a finer grade. That may have helped, but the key reason may be that Princess, the female, has a new guy.
It's unknown what happened to her mate of six years, Trey, although he could be taking a sabbatical from the territory, Maconachie said. In his place, Princess has hooked up with Ivy, a quiet male who has tried unsuccessfully to become a dad in west Winnipeg.
Ivy's ex, Jules, has a new beau, Maconachie said, and that pair is eyeing nest boxes on two buildings whose locations are kept secret in the western part of the city. So far, no west Winnipeg peregrine pair has succeeded in hatching a brood.
The province's third pair has also opted for the nest box at the longtime Brandon site, the McKenzie Seeds building. They're incubating four eggs, due to hatch by early June.
It's a year of three experienced falcon moms teaching three novice dads how this nesting business is done, said Maconachie, who is hoping for a baby boom to mark the 30th year for the recovery project.
It began in 1981 with the release of four captive-bred chicks. Since then, the project has seen 212 falcons released or hatched in the wild.
Maconachie has been getting a flood of calls about local peregrine sightings. She says many tundra peregrines are currently migrating through Manitoba. That subspecies winters in Chile and summers in the High Arctic.
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