There has been almost non-stop rain in Orange for about 5 days now. Fortunately the food supply hasn’t dried up too badly and there seems to be a slow but regular, fresh, buffet menu service available from both parents. At different times the two young females (and possibly Byng too) have availed of time alone or together in the eyrie – a slightly drier alternative to the trees outside. This morning we saw an intense feeding between Ophir and Narrambla with plenty of tugging and tearing going on, while Byng had taken a scout around the box a little earlier on. Weather like this isn’t conducive to fun times out flying although two young’ns were spotted about lunch time enjoying the blustery air pockets around the tower before blasting off over the trees again. Swift remains in the lee of the precipitation on the microwave dish arm.
It’s interesting to note that these young peregrines seem to show little or no malice or aggression at all towards each other, even when competition for a feed is very high. They seem content to concentrate solely on the objective, and indeed still get on very well together. No doubt that will change as they grow up and personal space becomes more of an issue. Last night it appears more than one bird slept over in the eyrie. Will keep an eye on tonight’s footage.
Yesterday’s delicacy was a galah. Yummo!
Incidentally, I reviewed the footage of the first bird to fly and it was clearly the largest of the birds, so presumably female, and not male as we thought from the measurements. This was the birds shown as Narrambla on the rocks that we caught and put up a tree.
For anyone interested, the measurements were as follows:
wing: 260 mm
tail 14.2 mm
weight: 496 grams
So I can only assume it was a female, but with considerable growing to do before it was technically a female. She was only 41 days old!
Noooo, not a galah! They are such beautiful birds! I guess that was quite the feast, though.