Wow...what great stills..but very sad for them. Thanks Joyce. I saw where one of them actually ate the yolk on the ledge. Why is that stuff lethal for falcons as Carol mentioned this am if it gets on their feathers? Is it like glue???

I fear the male is steril.

I was told that as well.  The female had many broods prior to this new male, he's been there 3 years now I think and no hatches since then.  It's heartbreaking, last year she sat on those eggs for almost 50 days...I wish they had given them the other 3 little ones that perished at the other site last week to foster.  But let's not go there.

Oh boy, your not kidding....this is so sad to watch her.

There go the 3 Little Pigs again!   

LOL.....all in a row! 

Breaking news!  Statler pefas still have four eggs!  We caught the changing of the guard and a clear view.  Hatching should be any time now.  All the nests will be checked tomorrow.

  How cool...thanks

egg gathering

Archer's shift
3 eggs

I guess anything can happen now....Nijmegen has no hatch yet, so maybe still time. HOPING

I had a feeling Annette...they have had bad luck the past couple years. One of them has to be sterile, I guess. So sad.

Beauty came back @ 10:11

First thoughts of this pic was " *%#* Happens " she says.

http://www.briloon.org/watching-wildlife/peregrine-cam.php Hatching has begun in Maine...double click cam for larger view and hear the creepy sounds of the building the nest is in. 

Looks like a long way down but if the Juvies end up down there, they can climb the ladder back home.

A law proposed by Central Coast Assemblyman Bill Monning would make it easier for California condors to get a meal after they are released into the wild.

Released birds typically chow down on specially provided carcasses of stillborn calves from dairies, until their natural food-scavenging instincts become attuned to the wild, said Kelly Sorenson of the Ventana Wildlife Society.

Providing the newcomers such sustenance has been the practice with the condor recovery program, in which birds are bred in captivity and then released. Current state law doesn't specifically allow or prohibit feeding free-ranging condors.

That would change under Assembly Bill 1956 authored by Monning, D-Carmel. The legislation, which passed the Assembly on a 61-0 vote, would set up guidelines for feeding and feeding sites under revised condor recovery agreements with the state Department of Fish and Game.

"It really is just to enable it ... and recognize that putting out food is necessary at this stage," Sorenson said.

Monning said the measure would help ranchers, wildlife officials and others in their efforts to assist condors as part of the state-federal recovery program.

Current law ignores the foraging needs of newly released condors and prohibits transport of dead animals except for burial on owners' property. The new law would allow transport to proper condor feeding sites.

"It's a way to establish a controlled network of food placement for the birds," Sorenson said.

The measure next goes to the Senate.

Sorenson said he is hopeful it will pass the upper house, though the Department of Fish and Game has put a $125,000 price-tag on revising the existing condor recovery agreements.

"That might not bode well, but it sure seems no one is against it," Sorenson said.

The world population of California condors is 348, with 95 in the California wild, 18 in Baja California, 74 in Arizona and 161 in breeding centers.

The sole source of food in the wild for condors is carrion.

[Muscovy lovers fight federal agency]

Muscovy lovers fight federal agency

Tobi Kosanke is concerned about the Muscovy duck being added to the List of Migratory Birds protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act .

On one side was the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a lumbering bureaucracy out to curb the spread of a pesky fowl; on the other, thousands of duck lovers, breeders and pet owners who feared for their flocks. Like forces of nature, inexorably they moved toward collision.

When the crisis hit three weeks ago in the form of new regulations for Muscovy ducks, the outcry was instant and stunning, at least by duck aficionado subculture standards.

Krazy K Farm Resident Muscovy Ducks Land in Government's Foul Territory,� cried the headline on a news release distributed by Hempstead farm owner Tobi Kosanke.

“We were blind-sided,� declared American Poultry Association chief Sam Brush.

“None of us had a clue this was coming down the road,� sighed James Konecny, president of the International Waterfowl Breeders Association.

At the dispute's heart was the wildlife agency's finding that the Muscovy ducks — a blue-eyed breed native to Mexico and South America — had extended its range into three counties in Texas' Rio Grande Valley, and, therefore, could be considered migratory birds.
Removal order

With that ruling came an order authorizing landowners and others to remove the birds and their eggs — killing them was one option — from any place in the U.S. outside the designated Texas counties. People who owned such ducks for any purpose other than meat production were barred from breeding them. Releasing them into the wild also was banned.

Duck fanciers were outraged. Muscovies widely are bred for show purposes — the breed was officially recognized as early as 1874 — said Brush, a Fort Worth-area resident whose organization oversees poultry competitions. The ducks also have been bred as pets for centuries.

Kosanke said her flock of 40 ducks roam her 35-acre farm eating mosquitoes, flies, mice and other pests. In addition, they produced prized free-range eggs that Kosanke sells for a premium.

“Our lives are ruled by ducks,� she said, “and we like it that way.�

The new federal regulations, she charged, put her flock “in the government's cross-hairs.�

Kosanke urged supporters to sign a pro-Muscovy petition. As duck lovers' protests flooded the agency, Konecny's group joined the fray.

“We made a pitch to get the ruling reversed or rewritten,� said Konecny, who lives near Chicago. “It was extreme. It did more harm that good.�

George Allen, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service branch chief who researched, then wrote, the regulations, said his agency was bound by international treaty to declare the ducks migratory once their permanent residence in the Rio Grande Valley had been established. Unlike many commonly hunted breeds on the migratory list, Muscovies do not make seasonal transcontinenal migrations.
Changing the rules

When the proposed rules were published in the Federal Register, they brought only 10 responses, mostly from people in Texas and Florida who complained that Muscovy colonies were a bane both to humans and wildlife by virtue of their aggressiveness and messiness. Such colonies, were subject to removal even before the agency's ruling, he said.

Allen, who specializes in wild species, had no knowledge that the ducks were a revered show bird, nor that some owners — such as Kosanke — consider them the ideal domestic pet, displaying characteristics of both cats and dogs.

Duck lovers, it turned out, typically were not Federal Register readers.

“We didn't know about them. They didn't know about us,� said Konecny. “It was like two worlds apart suddenly coming together.�

What happened next surprised just about everyone. Eyeball to eyeball with the nation's duck establishment, the federal government blinked.

Almost as soon as the new regulations became effective, the part most onerous to Muscovy lovers — the ban on breeding — was put on hold. “I'm working at revising my revisions,� Allen conceded this week.

Allen said the rulings' latest incarnation, which likely will appear in the Federal Register in about four months, will retain the designation of Muscovies as migratory birds, the provision for their removal and the ban on releasing them into the wild.

But, he said, the breeding ban will be lifted.

“We found they were pretty generous,� Kopecny said of his group's encounter with the regulators. “I was impressed.�

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid29266405001?bctid=79435303001  Video

Only seven groups of birds in the world have evolved as brood parasites, laying their eggs in other birds' nests, and ecologists have long been fascinated by this behaviour as an example of evolution in action.

Dr Claire Spottiswoode and Dr Martin Stevens of the University of Cambridge worked on two tropical African species, the parasitic Cuckoo Finch and one of its hosts, the Tawny-flanked Prinia.

Until recently, most work on cuckoos has been done in temperate regions - Europe and North America - where species are relatively young in evolutionary terms. In the tropics, however, the Cuckoo Finch and Prinia could have been locked together in an evolutionary arms race for up to 20 million years.

As parasites have evolved ever better manipulation of their hosts, hosts have responded with ever more refined defences to evade parasitism. As a result, the Cuckoo Finch's mimicry of host eggs is extraordinary, as is the Prinias' ability to spot the parasite's eggs.

According to Dr Spottiswoode: "Prinias lay probably the most diverse range of eggs of any bird in the world, and this is likely to be an outcome of the long co-evolutionary battle with the Cuckoo Finch."

"The eggs are analogous to a bank note, in terms of the variety and complexity of markings, perhaps to make them very hard to forge by the parasite."

To find out exactly how Prinias detect the foreign eggs, Spottiswoode and Stevens set up more than 100 rejection experiments in southern Zambia, putting one Prinia egg into another's nest and waiting to see if the egg was rejected.

They also collected data to feed into a computer model to give them a bird's eye view of the world, using a spectrophotometer to measure egg colours and a digital camera to analyse the eggs' complex patterns.

In the past, this kind of analysis was tackled by humans comparing eggs by eye, but human vision differs hugely from that of a bird. Birds can see ultraviolet light and because they have four types of cone in their eyes, compared with three in humans, they see a greater diversity of colour and pattern.

  A cuckoo finch nestles in a cisticola nest.

All About Birds, the Lab of  Ornithology’s bird-watching website, is one of five finalists (out of 10,000 entrants) for a Webby Award. Past winners include The New York Times, Google and BBC News.

Winning the People’s Voice award would help highlight All About Birds as a resource for learning about birds and the natural world.

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=1189