26 April

While we were having equipment problems, our camera zoom was set half-way out, rather than zoomed tightly on the nest box, and we recorded several copulations on the nest ledge. Each time, the pattern was the same. Bell arrived on the ledge while Stewart was incubating. Through vocalizations, posture, and feather position, she gave him an invitation, and he responded. After a brief copulation, he flew off, and she took over incubation duties. It's not surprising that they would copulate occasionally during incubation; there usually aren't abrupt transitions from one behavior to another. This pair has been observed copulating in every month of the year; presumably the copulations outside the breeding season are pair-bonding behavior.

Incubation is proceeding steadily, day by day, one shift change at a time. On some days, Stewart does up to a third of the incubation; he has done over 40% in some years, but this appears to be at Bell's discretion. While the adults are taking turns on the nest box, looking sleepy, fidgety, or alert, the real activity is inside the eggs. We are over halfway through incubation now, so the embryos are becoming fixed within the shell as they move into position for hatching. During the first half of incubation, the embryos are more or less free-floating, and turning of the eggs by the adults keeps them from sticking to the inside of the shell; sticking would prevent their life support systems from forming. The heat that the adults transfer to the eggs via their incubation/brood patches is necessary for embryo development; all the turning and care that the adults provide would not do a thing if they did not warm the eggs.

The result of all this adult attention to those eggs should be tiny chicks. We expect hatching the first week in May - probably beginning mid-week.

8 April

Welcome to the Seattle Peregrine Project 2002. We apologize for the delay in getting our web cam up and running.

The birds have not waited for us, of course. Stewart and Bell are now incubating four eggs. Egg laying dates and times are: 3/25 at 1425, 3/27 at 2029, 3/30 at 0041, and 4/1 at 0754. Last year, Bell laid her first egg on 3/21; however, last spring was sunny and dry, while this year, we had rain and snow less than a week prior to the first egg. Increasing length of daylight triggers breeding behavior, but it is believed that weather fine tunes the process. We are not far enough into incubation to tell how the adults will split incubation duties this year. Bell did the vast majority of incubation last year, but, in other years, Stewart has done over 40% .

Stewart first nested here in 1994, and his original mate, Virginia, died that June, when their chicks were still tiny. (Two young fledged that year, thanks to a great deal of human intervention.) Bell arrived in town in August, and she and Stewart promptly established a pair bond. She still had a few juvenile feathers scattered in her fresh new adult plumage, so we were able to determine her age (hatch year 1993). They nested the following spring (1995) and have nested every year since, except 1999, when they were unintentionally disturbed at a sensitive time. They are resident birds; they do not leave the area during the winter.

We had good news this winter about two of their offspring, thanks to their VID (visual identification) bands. On 11/25/01, one of the females fledged in 2000 was seen on a smokestack in Stanwood, about an hour's drive north of Seattle; she now is a beautiful adult. She is only the second bird from the Seattle nest that we know has reached adulthood in the wild (two other
individuals, non-releasable, reached adulthood in captivity). The other survivor in the wild was a hatch year 1995 male.

We have more good news about last year's male fledgling. We had a probable (incomplete band reading) report of him in the Kent Valley, south of Seattle, in October; he was identified near the University of Washington campus Thanksgiving weekend and was in the Kent Valley on January 7, 2002.

This past weekend, April 6 & 7, he was at the I-5 Ship Canal Bridge here in Seattle. There was an adult female at the bridge, also. However, we don't expect that he will nest this year; juvenile males usually lack sufficient maturity and hunting skills for the male's extensive responsibilities as part of a nesting pair.

There are more possibilities. There is now a pair in downtown Bellevue, just across Lake Washington from Seattle. This pair is an adult male and a juvenile (hatch year 2001) female. Her VID band tells us she is from Portland, from the longtime nest on the Fremont Bridge. This is the first confirmed report of a Portland bird appearing in Seattle.

It is exciting to think about having other urban pairs - if not this year, perhaps next year.