!!! William Osler Banding - 2 very healthy hatchlings sucessfully banded and sadly 2 were found dead!
May 26, 2016 - Etobicoke - William Osler
Mark Nash Reports:
May 26th - 2016
Banding day
Two bandings again today, back to back,, William Osler this morning at 10am and Duncan Mills this afternoon at 3pm! :-)
Despite the not so good news this morning at the William Osler nest site, we still have two very healthy hatchlings that were very feisty and in fine form!
A big thank you to Todd and his security team, and to the William Osler Hospital for all of their support, we were successful in banding two very healthy peregrine hatchlings that were very feisty and in fine form!!
It might appear with all of the recent activity in the form of competition from other peregrines trying to take over the William Osler nest site, (and there has been some very aggressive squabbling among the peregrines), two of the hatchlings have succumb to the fighting among the adult peregrines and have been killed. Sadly, we had to pull two dead hatchlings out of the nest tray. The two dead hatchlings were every bit as large as the two surviving siblings, and it appears that their demise has been a very recent happening indeed!
The security staff that have been monitoring the CPF nest camera on our in-house live monitor said that all four hatchlings were all quite alive and well 2 days earlier (as of last Tuesday May 24th), so this has been a very recent event!
The two surviving hatchlings were very closely examined for any signs of illness and other injuries and were deemed by all to be quite fine!
We were fortunate to have both Mark Heaton from the OMNRF and Kim Fernie from the Environment Canada and the Canadian Wildlife service with us today to get a second and third opinion on the two surviving hatchlings. The deceased bodies were removed from the nest tray and handed off to the Mark and Kim. Given the high heat and humidity, the deceased hatchlings were not in the greatest shape.
Peregrines do not cannibalize themselves nor do they typically feed their dead to their other hatchlings as some other birds of prey do (as with Bald eagles in particular),, and unfortunately the two deceased hatchlings were way too large and too heavy for the resident adult female to remove them from the nest,,,, which would be quite typical as we have documented via the live cameras over the past 20 years.
With well over 600 peregrine hatchlings having gone through our hands in the past 20 years from nest sites all over Ontario, (excluding that of the 100 plus hacked out and fostered peregrines that we parented, raised and released back to the wild through our hack release and satellite tracking programs), I can assure all that the two surviving hatchlings are very healthy indeed!!!
That being said,, we can not although do much about the territorial squabbling between the resident adults and the other peregrine intruders that have obviously caused the problems in the first place,, as they themselves must work out these problems on their own. We can only do so much. We will although be monitoring the nest site as closely as possible.
The two surviving hatchlings at we banded,, one male and one female were in fine form,,
- a male, weighing in at 690 grams, 23 days old, Black banded 05 over Y with Blue tape. (This is an older band, and the reason why it is out of sequence and different from all of the other bands being used this season).
- a huge female,, weighing in 985 grams, Black banded S over 53 with Red tape
We are waiting for the William Osler staff to provide us with names for the two hatchlings, and will post them as soon as we have the names.
The two hatchlings were successfully banded and returned back to the nest ledge with the resident adult female “in waiting” on the nest tray!!!
Please bear with us with regards to photos, as we have MANY photos to go through from the two bandings today. We are out on the road and in the field again all day today and not able to get much office and computer / internet time. Its that time of year again!!!!
Stay tuned…….
How sad for those two babies.
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DC is going to have his hands full with '3 girls'! No wonder he's been so subdued this year - it's like Beauty x 4 to keep him in line now! 
