Bonding and scraping

Still no sign of the juveniles, sorry.

Much courtship behaviour, with both bowing quite low, and deep clucking.  They generally start quite well apart, with Diamond (often on the ledge) sometimes approach Xavier, who hops about before leaving.

20161215 D and X at night Ledgecam

And the nestcame of the same scene (but shorter)

20161215 D and X at night nestcame short

Xavier spending some time as usual preparing the scrape almost each time he visits, but Diamond much less so.

Xavier scraping

Prey items have been brought in a couple of times, but unidentifiable (small morsels, really), but there has no food provided to Diamond.

The weather up until yesterday has been very hot and windy and on two nights Diamond has slept outside the box, but she was definitely there last night when we got 17 ml of rain. I was a bit worried about Xavier, as he didn’t turn up before dawn as usual, not until  early this afternoon.   I got a rather nice shot of him inspecting the webcam

Who’s dat, den?

I’ll be coming in over the weekend to catch up with other stuff, so will take some time to check out around the farm and campus and general area to see if any of our youngsters are still about.  I don’t think they would have enjoyed the heavy rain, but they are pretty tough and weather in Orange is pretty benign compared to many of their other areas.

I’m also going to start thinking about the data entry.  I haven’t forgotten about that, just over-busy and not sure how the best way to do this would be at a distance.  Hopefully I’ll have some time to think about this over the weekend.  I might start with sending a spreadsheet that has already been completed, along with the notebook entries, so you can see how this matches up.

Have a great weekend.

10 thoughts

  1. Interesting that yesterday, Xavier was absent until the early afternoon, whereas he is usually in the box pre-dawn. Now Diamond is absent. She was away all night (which is very unusual), and Xavier took full advantage of this, snoozing in the box out of the rain, and she is still not back.

    I’m hoping this is simply because the juveniles have moved further from the roost area, necessitating longer absences from the nest/

  2. Thank you Cilla and Arjen!
    The USA falconistas call this bonding chirping – Echupping
    This is the time that is so fun to watch outside as the parents teach young to catch prey – passing prey to the juvie in the air. Its also when city dwelling falcon juvies fly into windows and need rescue.

  3. Great footage of Diamond’s arrival with the galah – it looks so casual, the way she swoops in with it in one claw and plonks it on the gravel. Really shows just how powerful she is.

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