Peregrine Falcon, Orange NSW - 2020

Very sad but I did not hold out much hope for the poor little thing from the first time I watched one of your videos, unfortunately. It did not look healthy from the beginning so perhaps this is for the best, though I hate to say it. I hope the 3rd egg hatches; is it still within the usual time frame? At least the tiny chick on the Aussie Osprey nest at Port Lincoln seems to be improving, fingers crossed.

WendyBartter said:

someone on chat reckons its starting to hatch & can see movement inside??

I checked much earlier when I saw someone say that they saw a crack and movement but I couldn't find anything - and I haven't noticed any sign of a pip/crack whilst ploughing thru 8 hours of this morning's activities, for which I've produced a video and should not have bothered to include all the ins 'n outs, it's worn me out and no-one will have time to watch it.  No self-control, that's moi  

Xav seemed to go missing for longer than usual and Di was to and from the ledge and in 'n out.

Have just watched your vid Scylla, indeed a herculean effort but good to watch so much action especially the close up of feeding! Thank you

WendyBartter said:

Have just watched your vid Scylla

I might've known   

The rest of the evening's prey-drops, the last one not req'd:

Later in the evening, a somewhat restless Diamond tucked in the little corpse:

I think that Cilla Kinross is under great pressure of work (she wears several hats and is under-resourced), that's why I've been uploading all (barring mistakes) the incidents.

10 October

I've had some dropouts so had to fetch up bits from different cams.

A quiet night followed by a latish breakfast, then Diamond disposed of the corpse:

I presume (EDIT - I sincerely hope) this blood - under wing and around bottie - is from prey:

I did upload "afternoon events to 16:20" but am not posting it here.

Teatime to bedtime including 7+ minutes of eyas's stuck pellet (?), it didn't get a supper therefore.  The "scarred" failed egg shows up at the end.

Felt sorry for the poor choking chick, thank goodness it recovered!

11 October

Xavier was rather late this morning, occasioning a lot of to-and-fros by Diamond, and when he eventually took over he repeated the process until Diamond came back, then he went hunting and brought back a Starling, I think.  Eyas didn't get a huge meal from what we could see, which wasn't a lot.

I intend to ease off now - it should be easier for Cilla and others to follow now that there's just the one babe and it seems out of the woods.

11 October cont'd (I forgot these snaps from yesterday).

Elevenses:

First afternoon meal:

Brought back smaller:

Last delivery of the day:

12 October

Two breakfasts and the egg is carefully retrieved for incubating: