Amazing picture!

[Quiet few days]

Quiet few days

Apologies for the quiet few days – we’ve only been getting fleeting visits from any one or more of the peregrines, whether it’s a youngster or two, or Swift sneaking around to sit on the microwave dish arm, out of sight of her youngsters. The most reasonable explanation of course would be that they’re all over in town buying us some big Christmas presents and hiding them in the trees. Various sightings of the youngsters at play have been noted and the campus guides, who have been showing next year’s prospective students around the place, have also been pointing out Orange campus’s most unique tourist attraction. Very frustrating without leg banding as we can’t positively identify the youngsters at any one point in time and we can only go on character traits (e.g. Ophir’s ratty moments, or quiet Byng!). Leg banding is being re-visited as a priority in 2012.

As a little Christmas present to all our viewers we can now make available a highlights page entitled “FCP Breeding Season 2011� (pdf format, 1.05MB, A3 size) giving a 1 page summary of this season’s activities; hard to pinpoint the best moments with about 80GB of raw records to choose from but we hope you enjoy Swift and Beau and the kids, all on one page!

It’s also been brought to our attention that there may well be another eyrie located in Orange itself, in a prominent park. We’re going to check this out as soon as we can , but if positively identified the question is then asked if it’s one of our previous young. Without banding we may never know, but it’s great that the Orange locals are becoming more aware of this amazing bird species.

http://www.gumtreecs.com.au/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Highlights-sheet-2011-A3-r.pdf

Mischief in the eyrie



Three happy young peregrines

New video footage from early yesterday morning of all three youngsters visiting the eyrie at the same time. No-one seemed too aggro (looking at you, Ophir!) and everyone seemed to be happy together once more. It’s turned foul today, with rain-bursts all day but with some clear days coming up we’re sure to see more aerial antics.

http://youtu.be/uWxgUYnQUFw

Beauty just landed.

Hi, Beauty!

This video is really beautiful!

Speedy recovery for Bobbie!

That is a very sad story! 

  Happy birthday for you!       

Happy birthday!     

Look how far south the sun is rising now.

Beautiful!

I love that cute owl! 

[Some nice young peregrine moments]

Some nice young peregrine moments

On a changeable weather day the youths have been enjoying the superior views available from their “Concrete Hilton� lookout. Sometimes you just want to sit, relax and take it all in; other times you just want to annoy anyone else who’s sitting, relaxing and taking it all in! We’re very lucky that these three know where home base is.

http://youtu.be/TrRrHoVU4a0

Happy face with lunch

Beautiful RTH!

That is great! 

I found this cute video. Watch that end!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr7rT0HbqMU#

[Enjoying the peregrine young]

Enjoying the peregrine young

It seems this season we’re going to be able to enjoy all three youngsters for the immediate future as they seem happy to use the eyrie as their base for daily activities, and indeed often more than one spends the dark hours in there too. This afternoon, in the low, dark, rain clouds they could be seen soaring across the pine trees, trying out-do each other in sharp wheeling and speed races. One pass actually took them down through the campus’s tree-surrounded top car park at not far above vehicle height! A couple of videos to watch – an unlucky stick being attacked, and more frivolity from all three (9.5 mins)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14QocTrstKQ#

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcnfkKexHLU#

Colourful close-up


Protecting lunch