Apologies for the belated post, I had to rush back into work for a 1:30 meeting and just now got out – I hate it when work gets in the way of watching the falcons!

When I arrived at 10:30, Sacajawea was on the “staircase building”, having landed there sometime this morning. Linn was under the nestbox, Grace was on the north side of the tower on a pillar just below the letters, and Ananta was in the playpen. Mariah was on the north side of the tower on one of the letters watching over both Sacajawea and Grace, with Kaver on the launch pad watching the nestbox and playpen. Watchers included Lisa McK, Dana, and Jim P.

At 10:55 Grace took off and made a nice, even flight (with gliding!) (we actually thought that it was Mariah for a second there), a large loop over us then back to the very top of the cupola above the nestbox – she tried to hold on there at the pointy top, but after a few seconds let go and attempted to land on the ledge at the bottom of the cupola. She was moving a bit too fast for that, so took one more small loop around and successfully landed on the railing of the play pen on the east side.

A few minutes later, Mariah came flying around from the north side and landed next to Kaver, which caused him to take off, fly around for a few minutes, then headed northwest where we couldn’t see him, most likely to hunt (we think).

At 11:35, Grace hopped from the railing back into the playpen.

As more watchers arrived, Sacajawea kept us entertained by moving around on the small top of the building that she was on, sometimes laying down, sometimes flapping her wings a lot as if ready to fly again, and at one point laid down on the corner with her feet hanging down over the ledge! I think she was sunbathing… :p

Sometime before 1:00 Mariah arrived with food, and took it to the playpen. Lots of kakking by the kids as feathers started flying from the prey, wing-flapping from Linn, and eventually Sacajawea joined in the chorus. She did a whole lot of wing flapping, even sort of flying a couple of inches off the ground as she crossed the roof.

Right around 1:00, Linn finally took the plunge and got into the playpen.

So when I left at 1:15, we had Grace, Ananta, and Linn in the nestbox, with Sacajawea still on top of the staircase building, flapping away!

susan c

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 21st, 2007 at 10:35 AM and is filed under Fledge Watch Reports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.