Nona on the ledge, 4 eggs, posted by Deborah

4 eggs in Evanston

Two owlets can get up on the perch as of yesterday, and at least one is hanging at the entry hole and watching the world. Things are wild and crowded!

owlets, anyone? Chris has been mixing a few nighttime outdoor flight shots into the daily 500-capture slideshows. They're stunning. In the meantime,

http://epl.org/falconcam/

3 eggs

They drop backwards out of the box and then start flying?

maybe when they do a food drop, Paul - not sure. Often they are facing out and launch from that position.
Here are two more of the killer set of shots from the other day...plus one more, to test your sanity

I am entranced by the photos. How very cool.

yeah, the color photos mixed into that daily slideshow are amazing, and it's always worthwhile to run through the dailies, at double-speed if you're in a rush - stuff goes ON in there!!

nice turkey emoticon, Lola!

Here are three more. Again, forgive the light. It was not really dawn yet.

Lola, here's the link I posted for Kris
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/greater_prairie-chicken/sounds
if you scroll down just a little Cornell Lab of Ornithology has a recording of the call that you can play.

Gayle - there were, again, SEVEN rough-leggeds that we saw. They could have bothered the chickens but they did not. I think they were hunting field rodents, from the look of the one that pounced and came up empty-taloned

a wild Barn Owl in Ontario(they are all but extinct here)

they ARE, Frank? I had no idea!

4 bits of assorted weirdness, 2 of which pertain to discovering that you have long legs.

Aren't red-headed woodpeckers stunning?  I've seen a bunch around here and they never fail to make my eyes pop out of my head. 

They are. They are on fire. This one bit of woods at Necedah National Wildlife Refuge is just perfect for them, apparently - I was told there are 33 nesting pairs right there!

"Studying red-headed woodpecker nesting ecology on its newly restored savannas, Refuge staff found that nearly 100% of the nests were in dead limbs. Sometimes the dead limbs were on living trees, sometimes on dead trees but the red-heads always drilled their nest cavity as high off the ground as possible and always in a cluster of trees with dead limbs. In fact, Refuge staff discovered that there is a critical threshold of trees with dead limbs around nests. Below this threshold, the probability of a red-headed woodpecker nest being present is very low. Above this threshold, the probability of red-head nesting rapidly increases."

I bet the displaying males are a sight to behold!

they are. They make this funny motion with their neck to inflate those orange things, and tappity-tap stomp their feet. It's all so ritualized-looking. They stalk around trying to freak each other out. Apparently when they do these jumping lunges at each other with their nails out they can do some damage. When they fold up all their fancy business, however, the males look very much like females -- we were told that they sometimes do that to try to slip past another male.

Here's a great recording, Kris.
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/greater_prairie-chicken/sounds
It sounded a lot like that, except for the beer-bottle sound, which you only hear clearly at the end of this file, was constant and sort of a background for the other cry, which was also constant.