In case you haven’t heard the news yet, our two eyases will be banded tomorrow morning by wildlife officials from the New York State Dept. of Environmental Conservation. Here are a few things you should know.

The banding event will begin around 10:00 AM Rochester time. It shouldn’t take more than an hour to conclude. Local fans and birders are invited to gather at the corner of Broad and Exchange Streets in the city. From there you should have a front row seat for all of the flying we anticipate from Archer and Beauty as they defend their nest box and eyases during the banding process. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to see the actual banding of the eyases from the street, and due to space considerations and other factors, the number of people who will be present at the banding will be limited to only a few invited guests. Therefore you may want to consider Option B.

What’s Option B? Why, it’s to watch the banding LIVE from the comfort of your home, office or wherever you have a computer and an Internet connection. We’ll be broadcasting a live video stream during the banding event. Here are a few things you should know.

• The official source of information during banding will be the Rfalconcam Now board. Look for a Banding Day 2010 topic to appear around 10 AM EDT (Rochester time). One of our Forum moderators will post comments to the Banding Day 2010 topic throughout the process. To make the commentary easier to follow, you will not be able to post to the Rfalconcam Now board during this time. However, feel free to post to the other boards and chat areas.
• There will be streaming video from the banding room during the banding, but there will not be streaming video from the nest box. To watch the video, go to Rfalconcam’s Streaming Video page
• Rfalconcam’s famous high-quality pictures will continue to update throughout the banding event. Pictures from inside the banding room will appear on Camera 4. You will be able to view the pictures on Rfalconcam’s View All Cameras page or in the Archive Viewer

You can ensure that you don’t miss a thing by opening 3 browser windows on your computer:
Rfalconcam Now
Rfalconcam’s Streaming Video,
Rfalconcam’s View All Cameras

Be sure to refresh the Rfalconcam Now page every few minutes to see new posts.

Twitter users will also be able to receive the latest information by following RfalconcamNow.

We hope you’ll join us tomorrow for another exciting banding day event!

The Rochester Falconcam team has been hard at work with our partners at the New York State Dept. of Environmental Conservation on plans for Banding Day. Most of the i’s have been dotted and the t’s crossed, so we’re ready to announce that we’ll be banding Beauty and Archer’s two eyases on Thursday, June 10.

Banding activity should begin around 10AM, and we plan to conclude about an hour later. Since this is a new pair at a new nest site, there are a lot of unknowns this year. As a result, we have agreed with the DEC to make the banding a low-key affair, so on-site participation will be limited to a few invited guests. But don’t worry because we’re going to broadcast the banding event on our live video stream! This will give all our viewers around the world a chance to witness the banding as it happens– something that we’ve never been able to do before.

Along with the live video feed, we’ll be recording video for later broadcast on the Rochester Falconcam YouTube channel. We also plan to have a member of the Falconcam team providing online updates. We’re still working on the exact details of how that will work, but we’ll post more details once we get them worked out.

Of course, one of the most popular parts of the Banding Day activity is the naming of the eyases. This year we have invited two groups to submit names for the eyases. You’ll learn more about who they are and the names they chose when we announce them on Banding Day.

If you’re in town you might want to come down to the corner of Broad and Exchange Streets on Thursday morning. Usually the adult falcons put on quite a flying show as they wheel and dive in defense of their nest and the eyases. We’re not sure how Beauty and Archer will behave, but there’s a good chance you’ll get to see some fantastic flying. The local print, radio and TV media have also been invited to watch from outside, so if you come down you may get to have your very own “fifteen minutes of fame”.

So get out your calendars and mark the date. We’re looking forward to another terrific Banding Day, and we hope you’ll be able to join us.

Seneca & Cheyenne

From falcon watcher/photographers Chad and Chris over at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s Falconcam site comes this wonderful picture of Seneca posed with her eyas, which has been unofficially named “Warrior”. Two eggs hatched at Seneca’s improvised nest site under the Brookpark Road Bridge, but the second eyas did not survive. Seneca and her mate Cheyenne have been doing a fine job of providing for their young nestling. You can see a marvelous example of an aerial food exchange between Cheyenne and Seneca, also photographed by Chad and Chris, on the CMNH Falconcam Forum.

Quest

It seems like Quest may be taking a break from her constant traverse of Lake Ontario’s north shore. A majority of her location readings have placed her in or near Wesleyville, Ontario. As with last summer, she’s been making her base of operations at the power station there. She spent much of last summer near this power plant, so time will tell whether she stays or decides to strike out again.

Rhea Mae & Tiago

Rhea Mae’s three eyases were banded last week at the Sheraton Centre hotel in downtown Toronto. It turned out that all three were tiercels, or male falcons. The three were named Scribe-Star, Legacy & Lorenzo (pictured left to right, above). Several Rochester Falconcam fans and team members attended the banding, and they even provided the name for Legacy. Click the picture above for more photos and a video of the banding, courtesy of “Big Frank” Buston and our friends at the Canadian Peregrine Foundation.

After only two weeks the pair of eyases are growing like weeds. It almost seems like you can see them getting bigger right before your eyes.

Beauty is feeding them several times each day, with Archer doing much of the hunting. He visits the eyases too, but Beauty has been taking care of most of the feeding duty. By the end of this month they should be just about ready to leave the nest. But between now and then they still have a lot of growing left to do. You can see feathers just beginning to grow on their wings and tail. Growing feathers takes even more energy, so expect the feedings to continue at their current pace, or even to increase a little.

We’ve only been broadcasting our live video stream for a couple of weeks, but already we’ve risen to the top of the heap on Ustream. Ustream.tv is the website that hosts the live video stream from the Rochester Falconcam. It has become the most viewed on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, and we’re ranked the number 3 falcon cam since Ustream began service.

Turns out we’re not the only falcon webcam that’s streaming video. If you search Ustream you’ll find about 30 webcams dedicated to falcons. When you consider that some of these other falcon webcam sites have been operating for years, that’s something worth cheering about.

The fans of the Rochester Falconcam are key to our success, and we want to thank each of you for tuning in to see Archer, Beauty and the new eyases. By making us the most-viewed live falcon webcam the Rochester Falconcam is at the top of Ustream search results. That means new viewers are more likely to find us and tune in as well. Nothing succeeds like success, so give yourselves a big hand and keep watching!

Sometime during the night it seems that Beauty disposed of the remaining unhatched egg. Either she decided it was non-viable, or it became damaged. She may have consumed it or just removed it from the nest. We’re not exactly sure what happened to it, since the actual disposal wasn’t captured on any of our cameras.

It’s not unusual for first-time Peregrine parents to have some of their eggs fail to hatch. 2002 was the first year that Mariah and Kaver were together. Mariah laid four eggs that year but only two hatched.

We’d have welcomed three eyases, but for new parents, two is an excellent number. It gives Archer and Beauty an opportunity to hone their parenting skills. The basics come naturally to them; caring for young is instinctual. But like anything else, they’ll get better with practice. We’re already seeing Archer being more consistent with bringing food to Beauty, and he’s looking a little more comfortable keeping the eyases warm while Beauty gets out for a little hunting and wing stretching of her own. Beauty is doing a great job of feeding the eyases, and with just two hungry mouths to feed, it’s likely both of the young falcons will get plenty of food.

With all the excitement around the hatchings it’s easy to forget that we have other subjects to update. Quest has been zipping all over the north shore of Lake Ontario this month. Yesterday it looks like she headed north for a day trip up to Georgian Bay. She shows no signs of slowing down, or settling down either.

The two newly hatched eyases passed their first uneventful night tucked beneath Beauty for warmth and protection from the elements. The eyases can go for about a day before they need a meal, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t hungry. In fact, they’re pretty much hungry all the time! So you’re likely to see a lot of feeding going on.

Our high-resolution Main camera caught some great pictures of the second feeding this morning, which took place at 10AM local time (the first happened five hours earlier). In the photo above you can see typical feeding behavior. Both eyases have their bills open in anticipation of getting fed. Archer delivered the food to Beauty and she took it into the nest box. She ripped small pieces of the prey (an unidentified small gray bird) and fed them to each of the eyases until they had enough.

How did Beauty know she’d fed them enough? Because the sated eyases lose interest in more food. They stop begging and lay down for an after-meal nap. Watch for this pattern to repeat itself as many as five or six times a day. By the time the eyases are five days old they’ll have doubled in size! That takes a lot of food, delivered over many feedings.

Now that we have a live video feed, it’s easier than ever to see how a feeding happens. Tune in if you haven’t checked it out yet, and let us know what you think.

Even more viewers (nearly 600!) watched Beauty & Archer’s second egg hatch just after 7PM this evening. The sound of the eyas making the final breakthrough was transmitted very clearly, and Beauty was perfectly positioned in the nest box to give everyone viewing our new Live Video Stream a front row seat.

The third egg could hatch later tonight, or it might take as much as another 24 to 48 hours. Watch along with us!

By the way, if you didn’t get to see the hatchings, here are the replays:
First Hatch
Second Hatch

We’ll also put the highlights up on the Rochester Falconcam channel at YouTube.

We’ve had the first hatch of 2010, just a little after 3PM Rochester time. In the picture above you can see the fresh pink skin and white hair-like feathers of the eyas which has just emerged from its egg shell. It’s damp and blind right now, and the newly hatched chick can’t regulate its own body heat, so Beauty will be covering the eyas to keep it warm and dry on this damp Rochester afternoon.

Almost 400 viewers got to watch the hatching live, as it happened. If you weren’t one of them, you still have a chance to catch the other two eggs hatching. Just tune into the Rochester Falconcam’s Live Video Stream, and you too can join the fun while we wait for the other two eggs to hatch!