Yep, you guessed it, Beauty laid her fourth egg. We got our first clear look at it at 6:43PM. She and Archer have been sitting on the eggs pretty much constantly since the third egg was laid on Monday afternoon. Four eggs is an average clutch size for peregrines, and they usually begin incubating the eggs when the next to last one has been laid, so we’re fairly certain that she’s going to stop at four.

So, when will the eggs hatch? Well, provided that this is, in fact her last one, if we look back to Tuesday the 13th as the start of “hard” incubation, it ought to be 33-35 days from then. In other words, look for hatching to begin sometime around May 16-18. It usually takes a day or two for all of the eggs to hatch, but we should have some new eyases to watch by the third week of May!

Quest continued her restless movements over the past week, covering several hundred miles. She went as far east as Portland, Maine, and as far west as Toronto. She’s covered two Canadian provinces (Ontario & Quebec) and two states (Maine and Vermont) in the US.

That’s quite a road trip for our plucky Peregrine. There’s no indication that she’s about to settle down, though she has returned to the Lennox power station a few times during April. It could be that she’s on the hunt for a mate, or maybe she’s just infected with a bad case of wanderlust. Trying to understand all of her behavior based only on where she’s going (or where she’s been, depending on how you look at it), is a bit of a murky task. Still, this glimpse into her life is welcome, however limited it might be.

We get to celebrate our 400th post here at Imprints with the fantastic news that Beauty has laid egg nuimber three! It looks like the egg was delivered right around 8:45AM, but we had to wait another fifteen minutes to get a decent look at all three of the eggs. There are two on either side of her bill (the new one is on the right) and one behind her bill.

Beauty’s taking a well-deserved nap right now, covering the eggs. It’s too early to say if incubation has begun, but we’ll keep our eyes on the nest box to see if she begins to brood. If so, then we’d expect one more egg for a final clutch of four.

Check back often with the Rochester Falconcam to see what happens next with Beauty and Archer!

Proving she’s no one-hit wonder, Beauty laid her second egg last evening, somewhere around 11PM. Both eggs are visible in the picture above, though it can be hard to see them. You can see one just over the lip of the nest box. The other is a little farther back, but they’re both between Beauty’s feet. We’ll get a better look when the sun rises.

Falcons try to brood, or incubate their eggs all together, so that they hatch around the same time. Usually they’ll begin brooding the eggs when the next to last egg is laid, so watch her closely. If it looks like she’s beginning to incubate, we’ll know there’s probably one more egg to come.

Speaking of incubation, one of the questions that gets asked most often has to do with the fact that falcons may leave the eggs uncovered for long periods of time. This may seem unusual, but as long as the eggs don’t get below freezing, they can survive for several days without incubation.

When incubation does begin, both Beauty and Archer will both participate. They’ll place special areas of their breasts called brood patches in contact with the eggs. The brood patches have lots of blood vessels close to the skin’s surface, and these transfer the falcon’s body heat to the eggs to sustain the incubation process. Female falcons have larger brood patches than the males do, so they’re better suited to brooding larger clutches of eggs. But the males are pretty good at it too, so you’ll probably see Archer taking his turn keeping the eggs warm.

We’re beside ourselves with glee that Beauty has laid her first ever egg! The pink ovoid appeared just before 2:40PM this afternoon. This is great news after all the ups and downs that we endured in 2009. With this egg and the others that should follow, we’re hopeful that the rich legacy begun by Mariah in 1998 will continue for 2010 and well into the future!

How many eggs will Beauty lay? It’s impossible to say right now. Average clutch sizes are around 3-4 eggs, but since Archer and Beauty are a new pair, she could lay fewer than that. Plus, not all of them may end up being viable. Mariah laid four eggs in her first year with Kaver, but two failed to hatch. Of the two that did, one was Freedom, Archer’s father. What a wonderful string of events that has brought us to this point!

Now that egg laying has commenced, keep a close eye on the Rochester Falconcam to catch all the latest action.

It looks like Archer and Beauty are getting right down to the business of courtship. Our on-the-ground watchers report seeing courtship behaviors, and a look at the cameras at Times Square confirms that both falcons have been seen at the nest box bowing to each other. Bowing is a typical courtship activity, which is usually accompanied by both birds vocalizing to each other.

Another sign of courtship is that the male will bring gifts of food to a female (kind of like a man picking up the dinner tab for a date, or bringing chocolates to his valentine!). This demonstrates his ability to provide for a family, not to mention his skill as a hunter. Courtship also allows the Peregrines to renew their pair bond after their winter separaton.

As you can see, Archer has dropped off a nice fat Woodcock at the nest box. Beauty showed up a minute after the delivery (that’s her in the picture– thanks Ashira for the catch!) but she didn’t take the bird, perhaps because she’d already eaten. After she left Archer returned, grabbed the food and took it with him around 10:37. You can follow the action in this time lapse sequence brought to you courtesy of the Rochester Falconcam Archive Viewer (click the image below to watch the movie).

There’s been more courtship observed at the nest box today, so we’re looking forward to Archer and Beauty continuing to re-establish their pair bond. And as posted by Falconcam team member Carol Phillips over at our FalconWatch blog, they’ve already moved to the next step, mating!

If you’ve been keeping an eye on the Rochester Falconcam’s cameras, the FalconWatch blog or our recently enhanced Forums (all easily available thanks to our new and improved menu bar at the top of the page), you’d know that while Beauty has been spotted throughout the winter, we’d had no sign of Archer. A few weeks ago Beauty was seen at the nest box in the company of another male, but he left the area after only a short stay, and the best guess from our volunteer watchers is that the tiercel was probably one half of a pair that was just passing through town.

Truth be told, we were all starting to wonder how 2010 was going to shake out. It’s getting pretty late, and in years gone by we’d have expected courtship and even mating activity to be well under way. So I’m sure you’ll be able to appreciate the excitement we’re all feeling here at the Rochester Falconcam to see that on this inuaugural day of Spring, Archer has returned home!

The picture at the top of the page was captured by our super high-resolution Main Camera, another brand new feature that we’re happy to bring you. That’s Beauty in the middle, bowing. And on the left is Archer, his 25/V ID band clearly visible.

His return is fantastic news! We’re hopeful that this year will prove to be more bountiful than Beauty and Archer’s rookie season in 2009. Of course nothing is certain (Specto Subitus, as we like to say), but seeing Rochester’s resident Peregrines back together is a wonderful way to welcome Spring back to Western New York!

We have watchers on the ground today so keep your eyes on the FalconWatch Blog for all the latest updates.

Beauty’s been spotted around the downtown area all winter, but today is the first time this year that we’ve seen her on the Rochester Falconcam’s cameras. As expected, our new Main Camera got a great picture of her. This is about the time of year we’d expect to see the falcons begin to make their return to the nest box, so everything seems to be on track. Or does it?

Beauty had a friend with her today. Here’s a shot of him at the left, next to the Main Cam, munching on some prey. Beauty is looking on from the perch of the nest box on the right.

Looks like Archer right? Only, it’s not. This guy doesn’t have any leg bands! In this picture you can see his left leg, and there’s clearly no band. Archer had bands on both legs, so this can’t be him.

Beauty seemed comfortable with this newcomer. Our Falconcam Archive Viewer (new for 2010!) shows her waiting patiently while the tiercel devoured his brunch. They both left the nest box shortly afterward. So, as the 2010 Falconcam season gets under way, we may have a new drama brewing here in Rochester. Where’s Archer? Is he just late returning home, or is this new tiercel going to be Beauty’s new mate? We usually get a healthy dose of drama at the Rochester Falconcam, and it looks like 2010 is not going to disappoint in that department!

If you’ve been following us all year you remember that first Mariah and Archer, then Beauty and Archer, appeared to be making a nest site on the north side of the Midtown Plaza tower.  All of the human tenants are out of the tower and a large-scale asbestos removal project is under way now.

After the territory battle that displaced Mariah it appeared to our volunteer watchers that Archer and Beauty had settled into this location to start a nest.  Then, after a few weeks they abandoned the site and moved to the prepared nest box at the Times Square building.  We never went up to the presumed nest site at the Midtown Plaza tower because we didn’t want to stress the new pair if they were nesting, and because the building had been largely shut down.

Recently, Rochester Falconcam members Carol Phillips and Susan Conway were able to secure access to the ledge site one day before the asbestos abatement work got going.  Carol took some pictures of the ledge (view her KodakGallery album) and reported on what they found.

We were able to get up to the same floor as the failed nest site.  There were no windows from inside to view the gutter, so we walked out onto the top of the lower section of the building.  The same level as the nest site gutter.  We were able to view the gutter from the NE corner of the building looking south.  The gutter is too narrow to walk out onto.

There is no drainage from this gutter.  In fact, there are pipes that are pointed down into this gutter to drain water from the tower above.  During our torrential rain storms, this gutter would have filled with water.  In my opinion, this nest would never have never [been] successful.

The gutter itself is about 12-15 inches wide and 7-8 inches deep.

Susan and I looked for evidence of broken eggs or anything else from a Peregrine nest, but couldn’t find anything.

So, it looks like Archer and Beauty may never have laid eggs at Midtown.  If they did, the nest apparently failed and any trace of it has since been washed away.  The site doesn’t look ideal for a nest in any case, since as Carol noted there’s not much drainage, and in fact the gutter might have collected rainwater from other parts of the building.

It’s not unusual for the nest of a new Peregrine pair to fail.  We’ve also seen many cases in which Peregrines have made poor choices for nest sites.  We’re glad that Archer and Beauty availed themselves of the artificial nest box at Times Square.  It will provide an excellent nest, protected from too much wind, rain and sun.  We’re hopeful that next year we’ll see them lay their first clutch of eggs in Rochester.