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.

Quest spent the last days of March near Prince Edward County, but in April she took a different path.  First she went north, then she turned south-east.  Her movements over the past few days have been in nearly a straight line.  She’s been covering a lot of ground and it looks like she could be headed for the coast of Maine.

Quest got to enjoy the unseasonably warm weather that affected the northeast portions of North America over the weekend.  Her transmitter’s temperature sensor recorded a reading as high as 31°C on the 3^rd of April. So she’s definitely moving around a lot. It’s likely that means she hasn’t attracted a mate, though of course we can’t say that for sure. We’ll just have to keep watching to see where she ends up.

We have a flurry of information to bring you regarding Mariah and Kaver’s offspring, so here we go!

Seneca and Cheyenne
We begin with some really terrific news. Our colleagues at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History have had a falconcam of their own focused on the pair at the Terminal Tower for many years. Now it appears they have another pair in town. Our very own Seneca from 2008 appears to have displaced another female named Ely and taken over a nest site on the Brookpark Road Bridge just outside of Cleveland! Not only that, but she has a mate named Cheynne. He was also hatched in 2008 from a nest in nearby Akron, Ohio.  It hasn’t escaped our notice that both of these falcons carry the name of a Native American tribe.  What a wonderful coincidence!

This news is pretty recent; Seneca was only discovered a couple of days ago by one of the local watchers named Kim. She contacted Chris and Chad Saladin, who’ve been longtime observers (and extraordinary photographers) of the Cleveland area falcons. They were able to read her band and quickly make an ID. Today they published a bunch of photos of Cheyenne and Seneca mating, as well as some solo pictures of each. Here are a couple of Seneca:

Isn’t she gorgeous? Our sincere thanks go out to Chris and Chad for the excellent pictures, and to Kim for finding Seneca. You can follow Seneca and Cheyenne as they build their new family on the Seneca thread in our Forum.

Rhea Mae and Tiago

Rhea Mae and Tiago have laid their first egg at their nest box on the Sheraton Hotel in midtown Toronto.  According to watcher Linda Woods over at the Canadian Peregrine Foundation:

Rhea [Mae] had been spending many nights sitting at the nest ledge. But last night she was on the nest tray. After dark she climbed into the tray and laid down. This morning, egg # 1!

It looks like 2010 will be another productive year for Rhea Mae, Mariah’s daughter from 2006. You can follow all the news about her at the Rhea Mae thread in our Forum.

Quest

Quest has had one of her busiest weeks yet, covering several hundred miles from as far north as Ottawa and Montreal, down south to Lake Erie.  In between she spent a few days at her familiar hunting grounds near the Lennox Power station and at Prince Edward Point.  It’s anyone’s guess as to where Quest will settle down, if she ever decides to stop globetrotting, that is!

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.

The past few days have found Quest continuing her westward move. She spent a couple of days in Port Colborne, in pretty close proximity to the Archer Daniels Midland mill where Freedom had been the resident male until 2009. Then yesterday he headed north to the Royal Botanical Gardens in Hamilton.

Of course, Hamilton has a resident Peregrine pair, Madame X and Surge. According to Hamilton resident and Falconcam fan David Bevan, Madame X is very territorial. Hopefully Quest won’t get herself into any trouble while she’s touring along the west end of Lake Ontario!