A day for the Project and for the peregrinesIt was a very big day out for the Project yesterday, albeit a bleak & overcast one. An early start down at the Nature Conservation Trust cottage and a really good turn-out of staff and visitors who loaded up with a good feed prepared by the NCT staff head chef-ettes Denise and Tiff’. Miles and Angela at ABC Radio phoned in for a live interview & Project catch-up, and we then received a visit from of our main benefactors at 30 Squadron RAAF Beaufighter Association. It was a day of old stories, new chicks, colourful merchandise, the public launch of the new HD camera, plenty of pancakes with lashings of fruit & maple syrup, slideshow presentations, our friends from the Central Western Daily newspaper again, more footage on Prime TV for tonight (thanks heaps, Tim; very nice work!), and most importantly an increased awareness of what FalconCam Project is trying to bring to everyone. Thank you of course also to everyone who turned up for a feed and we hope you’ve all learnt a little more about what both the Nature Conservation Trust and FalconCam Project are doing hanging around Orange!
A really big thank you must go to Paul Toni and his team at the Nature Conservation Trust once more for giving us another hand up in our fundraising. It’s making a really big difference in our aims to upgrade equipment and capability. Any time we can help you out please let us know! Thanks to the CWD and Prime TV again for your ongoing interest, and thanks also to Angela and Miles and crew at ABC Radio Central West for another plug to your dedicated listeners! We must get you out to campus to see these amazing peregrines shortly, Angela! Can’t forget the luncheon that Mandy and her team in Banjo’s Bistro on campus then turned on for us – they should pay you all more!!
And thanks once again to the fantastic people that make up 30 Squadron RAAF Beaufighter Association. Your enthusiasm and financial support pretty much kicked us off 4 years ago and you’re indeed a part of the lives of these incredible (and very speedy) creatures. We thank you for your visit and hope you enjoyed the day on campus without being too bored to tears with all the trivia we threw at you!! Beau and Swift are of course named in honour of the Association (‘Beau’ from Beaufighter, and ‘Swift’ from the motto ‘Strike Swiftly’). See you all again very soon.
Current totals for the day exceeded AU$400 which puts a big hole in to funding required for the second new HD camera. Some happy snaps from the BBQ Breakfast for the Falcons:
CSU Staff
Kitchen staff
Tiff’ & Denise
Some noshing!
30 Squadron
NCT BBQ Breakie
Please note: as stated on the Live Cameras page there will probably be some outage times on the camera feeds owing to maintenance being performed inside of CSU’s servers from today until Sunday…
Ophir joins her siblingsI found the 2nd female, Ophir in trees not far from the water tower last night and, bingo, this morning she was squabbling with her siblings on ‘their’ tree (and old dead pine tree) over some tasty morsel of pigeon or similar. So she found her way back ’home’ fine. Sorry I didn’t have my camera with me. Swift was on guard on top of the tower and Beau was presumably off hunting (five hungry mouths to feed including his own!).
So it appears we have a successful fledging of all three juveniles. Congratulations all round.
It’s interesting that the parents appear to make no attempt to ‘fetch’ the youngsters that stray after their first flight (or flop as the case may be) and wait for them to find their way back to the others. But of course they may well know where they are.
Cilla Kinross
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Thank you for sharing!
A very happy birthday for you! 
