It was quite windy today and the juveniles seemed to sense it wasn’t the best day to totally wing it off a perfectly good solid surface. But that didn’t stop Kekoa from playing push-the-peregrine: he took great delight in scurrying down the runway towards an unflappable parent and making them fly off, again and again. Eric, one of the fledgewatchers, caught pictures of one such episode here.
Kekoa’s favorite spot was on the eastern end of the ledge, with his sister below him most of the time. Although Maya got in a good one: she made it up to that top ledge herself, walked towards him, and then looked she was going to keep right on going.
HEY! His beak opened and one could just hear him squawking, STOP IT! Or I’ll tell MOM on you!
She stopped just shy of shoving him over. You know, enough to get a rise out of him (almost!) , not enough to get herself in trouble.
Siblings.
The parents have again spent the day watching over their young, ready to swoop down alongside and show them how it’s done should they go over.
There’s one there right now: on the louvers below the little guy, who joined his sister in the nestbox but scrambled right back out again. I didn’t fly! I can’t go to sleep yet!
He is as I type on the lower ledge behind the nestbox, the parent present and watchful as ever. It’s quarter to nine. He just snuggled against the wall. Cold concrete–not a warm sister. Not even the wood of the corner that they like to put their heads into. Crum. His eyes closed a few times. He turned and looked dowwwwwwwnnnn, straight down. He turned back and huddled away from that for now.
It’s dark. How do I get back home! He’s thinking, but he’s outside the box.
Okay, I typed that and stopped to watch instead of doing the intermittent glance. He got up and started pacing that low ledge. C’mon, piece of cake, I’ve done the ledge-to-ledge thing before. He made it up there despite the dark, (yay!) walked along it till he could peer down into the nestbox where his sister was settled in for the night. Safety. At last.
