Hi Folks,
Orville and Wilbur fledged yesterday and I could watch them flying today between their "homebase" and adjacent buildings. Wilbur - who is about 3 days older than his "little" brother Orville - had already managed short flights onto higher structures on the roof where their nestbox is and yesterday morning I received a report that he did his first witnessed flight over the rooftops with a successful - if not perfect! - landing back on the roof.
But, this week also came with some excitement for humans and peregrines.....
On Tuesday - the day in the week I usually work from home - I got a call at 9:15 in the morning from Michael, our "liason" at the nestbox's building: somebody had allowed a worker from a phone-company to go up onto the roof to fix something or other at one of the antennas. Needless to say, this shouldn't have happened and Freya and Lorenzo were in a frenzy (I guess the technician hadn't realised what it meant when he was told that "birds were nesting up on the roof!"). Unfortunately, one of the eyases was spooked and jumped from the roof. Luckily enough, he apparently was already able if not to really fly to flutter down and land on a carport's roof above streetlevel. He stayed there for a while and I was in phone-contact with folks working at the nestbox's building and the building across the street. The "jumper" didn't seem to be worse for wear and was looking around. After cancelling a call I would have had at ten I took the car and drove over to the nestbox-building. When I arrived, the first thing I saw was Michael and some other people with a cardboard-box and a blanket, so it looked as if the eyas had jumped down to street-level. And he had! He was already backed against a smaller building sitting - protesting! - next to some plants. I had a lighter cloth with me and used that to distract and then grab him and he me (no gloves, unfortunately, and the scratches to prove it!). He didn't look hurt, had a firm grip with his talons, was looking around (still protesting) and also tried to beat his wings. Reading his band, we learned that it was Orville, the younger of the two brothers. We put him in the cardboard-box and Michael and I used the elevator to carry him up onto the roof again. After a final check of his wings, we set him free in the middle of the roof and he hopped/walked quickly away to the edge of the roof where he stayed put.
We quickly left and went down to the street again to see if everything was okay. From there we only saw Lorenzo on the antenna of a neighboring building, Freya on the rooftop and one of the eyases. By the time we came back from checking the other side of the roof (no falcon visible), Bianca had arrived (she works in an office on the opposite side of the street and has a great view on the happenings on the roof and keeps me updated via email). Bianca and I went up onto the balcony in the building she works in to see if we could spot both eyases from there....and, we could! Orville was standing close to his older brother Wilbur and both were watched by the still agitated Freya who kept kaking at everybody she could see (including most likely Bianca and myself). After a while she calmed down, Lorenzo flew off to get something to eat for his family (I guess) and we left the falcon-family after being as sure as we could be that everything was okay with everybody.
Later on Tuesday, I got another call from Michael, that the antenna was apparently still acting up and that technicians would need to go up onto the roof again and what we could do to prevent that. Some phone-calls later - on Wednesday - we had the reassurance from a civil servant that the phone-company would just need to wait with the repairs until the peregrines had successfully fledged regardless of any econmic damages they might incur due to that (I just love our strict laws when it comes to endangered wildlife!).
We have some picture-galaries up on the homepage
http://nabu-fellbach.de:
Bildergalerie - Beobachtung am 29. Mai 2010 Bildergalerie - Beobachtung am 25. Mai 2010 Bildergalerie - Beobachtung am 24. Mai 2010Cheers
Baerbel
