Aspro has surprised everyone and caught us on the hop by fledging early, although it appears it wasn’t entirely intended, nor was Aspro psyched and ready. Saturday 15th November 2014, 5.05pm local time Aspro left the eyrie during very strong winds and has now excperienced a night of rain and more strong wind – entirely out of character around Orange for many weeks now (high fire danger and total fire bans just the day before). At just 37 days old Aspro took flight from the Concrete Hilton, which is 2 or 3 days earlier than expected but still within the average.
Indeed Aspro has been showing increasing agitation over the past few days and for a full 2 hours before skipping off was madly flapping, jumping around and getting very close to the ledge – too close it seems this time as initial pics show Aspro desperately trying to get back up without luck, before disappearing east around the tower.
Two hours was spent this afternoon walking campus, down around the vineyards (located just east of the tower), through the tree and shrub thickets and around campus (as has been the need for previous fledgings), but to no avail. The good sign is that there hasn’t been any pile of peregrine feathers anywhere and a few seasons ago Solo disappeared before proudly returning 5 days later in cries of excitement. A worrying sign is that Swift sat on the ledge the whole time and never raised a cry while I was walking through the trees – a sign that she doesn’t know where Aspro is either, as normally she’d be making herself heard.
An email will go around the whole of campus to keep an eye out for a lost peregrine fledgling this week and once found we’ll identify but leave alone.
We can but hope Aspro survived the rainy night and has found shelter off the ground….. always sad to see the eyrie empty again, but after a positive sighting we’ll be overjoyed at having observed yet another new peregrine falcon obtain its wings.
Nov 16
It seems from watching the footage that Aspro fell asleep on the ledge and simply fell out. She then appeared to try and scrabble back in, but lost her footage. It’s Sunday afternoon here, and this happened as Scott pointed out just after 5pm yesterday before a night of rain. I will go and have another look around and get back to you asap but I have off-campus work commitments Monday and Tuesday, so be patient.
http://youtu.be/yElP5AEZ7lA Poor little guy, hope he's OK
She sleeps then looks around.
