Apologies for the quiet few days – we’ve only been getting fleeting visits from any one or more of the peregrines, whether it’s a youngster or two, or Swift sneaking around to sit on the microwave dish arm, out of sight of her youngsters. The most reasonable explanation of course would be that they’re all over in town buying us some big Christmas presents and hiding them in the trees. Various sightings of the youngsters at play have been noted and the campus guides, who have been showing next year’s prospective students around the place, have also been pointing out Orange campus’s most unique tourist attraction. Very frustrating without leg banding as we can’t positively identify the youngsters at any one point in time and we can only go on character traits (e.g. Ophir’s ratty moments, or quiet Byng!). Leg banding is being re-visited as a priority in 2012.
As a little Christmas present to all our viewers we can now make available a highlights page entitled “FCP Breeding Season 2011” (pdf format, 1.05MB, A3 size) giving a 1 page summary of this season’s activities; hard to pinpoint the best moments with about 80GB of raw records to choose from but we hope you enjoy Swift and Beau and the kids, all on one page!
It’s also been brought to our attention that there may well be another eyrie located in Orange itself, in a prominent park. We’re going to check this out as soon as we can , but if positively identified the question is then asked if it’s one of our previous young. Without banding we may never know, but it’s great that the Orange locals are becoming more aware of this amazing bird species.
Bonjour,thank you for the video and new! they are beautiful and healthy…I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2012, and your entire team!
Anne-Marie
Bonjour Anne-Marie, et merci beaucoup!
Merry Christmas to you and to all our supporters and viewers. Your input and comments this year have been a really big part of the Project and it means a lot to us all that our efforts are so worthwhile (and, as importantly, on the right track!). We’ll keep monitoring & maintaining over the Christmas/New Year campus holiday (university officially back on Jan 3rd). Next year will be another big year for us all, with technology improvements and hopefully some new surprises. It’s a shame that the only individuals who are not enjoying the results are the peregrines themselves – the less they know the better!
Cheers and best wishes,
Scott