Poor baby 

This is so sad. I love whales, I collect them...mostly Orcas but am fascinated by all whales. Thanks Gayle. I hear the petition has over 400,00 signatures already for stop the Killing. Some are listening but not all. 

3:49 Beauty wants in...Archer out!
He has his back to her.
Boss wins 

Nestled in herself!   

Showing off her cleavage and her double "eggs"   

two visitors - one is a starling, probably.
Who's the other?

LOL, it looks like a Gull. 

Archer's in

 

posting on canadian peregrine site:

!!! Cameras down, No hatch yet
April 25, 2010 - Toronto - Sheraton Centre

Linda Woods Reports:

Both cameras are down, and at this time I don’t have a clue as to why. Incubation continues, and with the cooler weather today, Rhea Mae and Tiago are hanging tight to the eggs.

Oh no....poor Linda.....what to do! Thanks jeanne. Maybe someone here can help Linda.

[we have a hatch!]

we have a hatch!

Thanks Janet

and more baby storks!

and then we have Rhea Mae and Tiago's little one that tried to escape by bus a couple year's ago.  A bus headed for Niagara Falls!  Thankfully Linda was on Watch.  She stopped the bus from leaving and called Mark & Marion Nash.  The little would-be traveler was scooped up off of the top of the bus and returned to the Sheraton nest ledge.

Yup, Lily rode the bus!

[4 now]

3 eggs! It's going fast

4 now   

Animals riding transit have become a global phenomenon. What??

The grey pigeon stays close to the centre pole, like any other subway traveler. The train reaches Runnymede station, and on cue, she struts toward the doors, stepping through just before they close.

The video of the subway-riding pigeon, taken in February by Elaine Georgolios, has recently become more than a YouTube sensation. Sent to Cornell University's Lab of Ornithology, it has been shared and discussed by pigeon researchers.

The bird doesn't seem lost or disoriented. It looks like it's just trying get where it's going, like everyone else.

“Nothing surprises me,� says Charles Walcott, professor emeritus of neurobiology and behaviour at Cornell University. Walcott, who has spent much of his career studying how pigeons are able to find their way home across long distances, says the birds are smarter than we give them credit for. He sees no reason why they couldn't find their way around a subway.

“It may have been a fluke the first time (it rode the subway), and then the pigeon said, ‘Well, that's a neat way to get around,'� says Walcott.

At Cornell, where researchers at a program called Project PigeonWatch study the birds, an assistant hypothesized that Henry could simply have been going where he saw more light when the subway door opened at Runnymede. Pigeons are attracted to light.

Walcott doesn't entirely agree, however.

“Then why did it get into the car in the first place?� he laughs. “You gotta ask the pigeon.�

Pigeons aren't the only non-human species riding transit.

Some stray dogs in Moscow have been using the subways for years. They navigate a complex maze of subway lines and get on and off at regular stops in a bid to find food.

Only a small fraction of Moscow's approximately 35,000 stray dogs have adapted to riding the subway, but those that do zip on and off quickly. They stretch out beside passengers on rows of seats, or lie down beside peoples' feet.

The subway isn't always a safe place for the strays. One dog, Malchik, was stabbed by an unfriendly passenger. A statue of him was erected in Mendeleyevskaya station.

Other urban animals are also finding ingenious ways to adapt and thrive in sprawling, hard-to-navigate man-made environments.

For some reason, cats seem to prefer the bus. There is the white cat nicknamed Macavity, after a T.S. Eliot poem, who rides a bus in England's West Midlands, getting off at a row of shops down the road.

Another British cat, Casper, rode a Plymouth bus every day for four years, sleeping for the entire round trip before the driver let him off at his stop. He was killed in a hit-and-run, and a book about his adventures is reportedly in the works.

A few months ago, Toronto saw its first bus-riding dog when a puppy boarded a Scarborough bus without its owner. That was a one-time trip, which ended when animal services brought it back to its master.

Witnesses have reported Toronto's pigeon, now called Henry, returning to the station every so often. The birds have appeared at other stations as well, not bothering anyone, just sitting on the platforms.

Maybe they know what they're doing. Walcott says the birds have surprised researchers with their abilities before. In some experiments at Harvard, pigeons were placed in front of a slide show and trained to peck a key when they saw one with a human being on it. They were rewarded with corn when they picked the human, and punished with the lights being turned off if they picked the wrong slide. The birds were able to choose a slide with a boy partially hidden under a bush — one researchers hadn't noticed had a human on it.

 

“What it tells you is that these pigeons are extraordinarily good in their visual discrimination,� says Walcott. “Pigeons have been regarded as flying rats, and the thing they share with rats is an extraordinary flexibility. They're a lot brighter than we give them credit for.�
Also see:

http:
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlrnV_Tr7tk&feature=player_embedded  Now this is funny, it's like he knew just where to get off!   

[Check World of Birds for further updates on Boeing.]

OTTAWA — High in the treetop, the wind blew, the cradle rocked, and sure enough, the baby fell out.

Its mother, a great horned owl, found the nest empty and called, long and loud, for her owlet.

A group of Ottawa birders, out for that fateful day on Petrie Island, heard the mother.

Gary Fairhead, an experienced birder, had days earlier taken photos of the nesting owl and owlet. Keeping aconsiderable distance from the nest, he used a high-powered telephoto lens to capture photographs of the owlet being fed rodents hunted by the mother.

And then, on that windy Saturday in early April, he brought some interested fellow birders to see the great horned owl pair.

“One of the lads had not yet seen this owl and when we neared the area, I pointed to the squirrel nest that they were using. I was startled to see through my binoculars that the mother owl was not sitting on the nest and I could not see the owlet either,� he recalled.

They could, however, hear the calls of the mother.

“We feared that a predator had taken the little one, but about 10 minutes later it was suggested that the base of the tree be checked as it was extremely windy and one of two owlets had fallen from a similar nest last year,� Fairhead said.

The fluffy white owlet was found on the ground, having landed on a pile of dead leaves. It appeared to the birders to be unhurt.

The nest, however, seemed to be destroyed, probably by high winds. In fact, the birders discerned that it was actually an abandoned squirrel’s drey that the great horned owl mother had adapted for her own use.

William McMullen, one of the group, called the Wild Bird Care Centre and explained the situation. The staff at the Moodie Drive centre advised the birders how to transport the owlet.

Another member of the group, James McDonald, had a box in his car and McMullen had a blanket. The trick then was to approach the owlet without provoking the mother since great horned owls have a reputation of attacking people who get close to their young. McDonald and fellow birder, Ted Busby, worked quickly to smoothly transfer the owlet from ground to box. With his back to the mother owl, McDonald carefully picked up the owlet, and placed it into the blanketed box. He then departed immediately for the walk to his car and then the drive to the Wild Bird Care Centre.

Fairhead stayed behind for about an hour. ‘While it was comforting that the owlet had a chance at surviving its ordeal, the mother owl was still calling and seemed unaware that the owlet had been removed from the area,� he said.

At the Wild Bird Care Centre, the owlet was checked over and found to be in good health. On the scales, the owlet weighed in at 747 grams and was promptly named Boeing.

Three days later, the Wild Bird Care Centre staff made an attempt to reunite Boeing with its mother. Jody Miall scaled the tree and attached a reconstructed crow's nest to the partially destroyed squirrel’s drey in the hopes that the mother owl would return and resume her care of the owlet.

Near sunset, it became apparent that the mother owl was not returning. Boeing was once again taken from his nest and returned to the centre.

The staff at the Wild Bird Care Centre knew immediately that if Boeing had any chance of living the natural life of a great horned owl, he would need to be put in the care of another owl. They contacted The Owl Foundation, a non-profit conservation organization that operates a centre for rehabilitation of owls.

There, Boeing is thriving under the care of an experienced foster mother owl. He even has a foster sibling to be owlish with.

Check World of Birds for further updates on Boeing.

Returning home all the way from South America, cliff swallows arriving to raise another flock of young at Magnuson Park this spring are finding they have been evicted.

The city parks department scraped all 174 of their nests off Hangar 27 at the park last Friday night to accommodate the construction schedule of a developer leasing the hangar from the city. Don Crowe, of Arena Sports, plans to build and operate a for-profit sports arena at the hangar, a project paid for in part with more than $1 million in federal tax credits.

The parks department says it had to remove the nests for liability reasons before the birds began raising their young again, but that it will welcome them back again next year. But Crowe, just granted a 10-year extension on his lease by the City Council, has other ideas.

"Do you want kids to try to walk around a bunch of bird bathrooms?" asked Crowe, who is investing more than $8 million to rehab the derelict building, where he wants to open an indoor soccer center, basketball courts, an inflatable playground for kids' parties, and a fitness center.

"It is not healthy and safe. I agreed with the parks department to try to work out a long-term solution, but not there. It would be a big problem."

In addition to bird poop, Crowe said he is worried that if something were to happen to the birds or their nests, he could be prosecuted under federal regulations that protect swallows and other migratory birds. The law imposes fines or jail time for directly or indirectly harming migratory birds, such as by causing a disturbance that disrupts their nesting.

"What would you do in this situation? Would you risk going to jail?" Crowe asked.

At the advice of the city's risk manager, the parks department decided to destroy the nests to protect Crowe and the city from liability during construction. It's legal to destroy the nests with a permit from the federal government, as long as the birds and fledglings aren't present.

Bird advocates say the concerns are overblown. Volunteers from Seattle Audubon have washed down the buildings at Magnuson in the past to deal with the poop complaint. And cliff swallows routinely nest under highway bridges roaring with semi trucks and other traffic, undisturbed by the racket.

Activity at the new sports center may or may not affect them, said Dennis Paulson, of Seattle, director emeritus of the Slater Museum of Natural History in Tacoma and a master birder.

Paulson was disgusted that the city destroyed the nests. "Give me a break," he said. "Millions of birds are killed every year in this country unintentionally, and you don't see some game warden out there."

He predicted the birds will rally and find another nest site this season, perhaps even in the park. But whether they'll come back to Hangar 27 next year is anyone's guess. "If they like their new spot, they may just stay there," Paulson said. "It's sort of an experiment that is being played out here."

The birds make gourd-shaped nests of mud, and they return to the same nests year after year. Their homecoming is one of the bellwethers of spring, watched for by the locals.

"Everyone likes to watch them soar and swoop, and they eat a tremendous number of insects," said Tom Kelly, a volunteer steward at the park. "I am not opposed to indoor soccer, but I think it should coexist with the swallows. I don't think the balance is quite right."

For its part, the parks department is committed to letting the swallows come back to the building next year, said Joelle Hammerstad, spokeswoman for Seattle Parks and Recreation. "We are pro-wildlife," she said. "The birds will have access to Hangar 27."

City Councilwoman Sally Bagshaw was pointedly pro-swallow. "We had a deal," said Bagshaw, who chairs the council committee that met with Crowe in March to discuss the issue.

Recalling an April meeting with Crowe just before the nests were ordered destroyed, she said she got a clear understanding from him that the swallows would be allowed back to the building once construction was over. But she wasn't there for the whole meeting, and Crowe says he doesn't remember saying that.

"I never had it in my plan that they would be there long term," Crowe said Friday of the swallows.

Wildlife issues are not new for agencies responsible for repairing and maintaining all kinds of structures. The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) deals with everything from bushy-tailed woodrats to bald eagles that choose to call bridges and other structures home. The agency has an elaborate protocol of workarounds to avoid disrupting animals during nesting seasons, and it even invites some birds, such as peregrine falcons, to move in by posting nesting boxes.

"They are our friends; they should be on the WSDOT payroll," said agency spokeswoman Jamie Holter, who added that peregrines devour pigeons that poop on bridges, damaging the paint. However, the agency regularly puts up nets on its Interstate 5 bridge over the Nisqually River, right next to a wildlife refuge, to keep cliff swallows from nesting on the structure so the agency won't bother the birds when it has to do maintenance work.

But at Hangar 27, the birds have nested near doors that are going to be welded shut once the sports facility is open, so it seems a compromise ought to be possible, said Matt Mega, conservation director of Seattle Audubon.

"There won't be a lot of access around there, and the whole issue of poop isn't an issue unless he makes it one," Mega said of Crowe. "It's a public building. There needs to be a compromise."

 There likely will be no "Hell Week" this year in downtown Salt Lake City. And Cat Kivett is not happy about it.

Kivett is part of the Peregrine Watchpost Team, which spends several weeks every summer waiting for peregrine falcon chicks born in nest boxes on the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, and occasionally other downtown buildings, to attempt their first flights.

However, renovation work on the Smith building, and the general scope of the huge City Creek project downtown has apparently chased the peregrines away -- at least for this year.

"I am disappointed, very disappointed," Kivett said. "It is a lot of fun watching them learn to fly and to hunt. People touring Temple Square see us with binoculars and ask what is going on. It is cool to share that with people."

Volunteers have long dubbed the chicks' learning period as Hell Week, because of the frequent crashes and ensuing chaos that results in trying to protect the young falcons as they learn to take wing.

The chance that a peregrine pair have built a nest unbeknownst to observers -- or will create one -- still exists, but the nest-laying time is now.

"April is prime time for egg deposition," said Bob Walters, Watchable Wildlife Coordinator for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. "We are still looking, but it seems like we won't see any peregrine falcons chicks this year."

A nest box on the Joseph Smith Memorial Building that has housed a pair of falcons the past three summers -- and was wired with audio and video for a popular web cam -- was boarded up earlier this year so work can be done on the historic building.

"The work started in mid-April and will end sometime around mid-July," said Richard Sawatzki, facillty manager of the Joesph Smith Building. "If the falcons had been trying to nest it likely would have been disruptive and may have caused them to abandon the eggs or chicks."

In an effort to provide another option, officials from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, set up another nest box -- also wired for the Web -- on the nearby Church Office Building. The nest box has been moved around on the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in the past with some success, but no raptors have shown interest in the new digs.

The pair of falcons that have spent the past three years in the boarded up nest box could have set up shop in a nearby canyon.
 "My concern is that they have relocated into a wild area and they will be susceptible to predators of the animal and human variety," Kivett said. "People have been known to take fledglings for the black market."

Kivett has been a part of the Peregrine Watchpost Team for the past four years and she isn't ready to give up on the birds, even if it means her summer evenings will be spent with eyes to the skies. She plans on continuing the search downtown and in the canyons.

"If we can find their aerie in the wild that is where I will be," she said. "I won't be able to be much help to them, but I'm kind of addicted to them."

Sawatzki said there is more work planned on the Joseph Smith Memorial building in the future that may also lead to the closing of the nest box that has been used the past few years.

"We may have the same issue again. If we do, we can use the box being used this year," he said. "We enjoy the falcons and want to do what we can to keep them around, but we need to maintain the building."