It looks like SW has finished laying eggs - we hope the 3 remaining eggs will hatch. In this close-up, you can see traces of the missing egg stuck to the remaining eggs….
Mr. Harvey Webster, Director of Wildlife Resources at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, has described a variety of possibilities that could cause the loss of an egg:
•Disturbance at the nestsite might have caused one of the parents to break an egg, or Ranger, being an inexperienced dad, might have accidentally broken the egg - but the FalconCam does not support this.
•A “bad” egg, which could have been caused by disturbance to SW while the egg was forming inside her, pesticides, disease, poor diet, etc. Although SW seems healthy and is well-fed, no one knows whether pesticides or chemicals are causing damage to eggs.
•SW’s age may have caused her to produce a bad egg - she is 12 and we may see a decline in her ability to produce healthy eggs. However, she had a bad egg in 2007 and these things just happen sometimes.
Mr. Webster, of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, tells us, “Even in heavy rain, the water repellency of feathers is very effective. In part, this water repellency comes from the daily preening of the feathers. As the adults preen their feathers, restoring their velcro-like vanes and streamlining their order, the birds will pinch a small nipple like gland above the tail called the uropygial gland with their beaks. This gland secretes a combination of waxes and fatty acids that, when distributed on the feathers during preening, confer water repellency to the feathers. As a result water beads up on the feathers and rolls off the bird's back without soaking the feathers or down”.
Aren’t SW’s feathers beautiful?
A typical day in the life of SW and Ranger during incubation finds SW doing most of the egg-sitting, as the female usually sits on the eggs for most of the day and throughout the night. Ranger will sit on the eggs for a few hours each day so that SW can go out and stretch her wings and take care of her needs. Most importantly, Ranger will catch food and bring it to SW.
In the next picture, SW takes a mini-break to clean her feathers. This important bird activity is called “preening” and must be done to keep feathers clean and healthy. Volunteer nest monitor, Mr. Scott Wright, tells us, “Feathers are a bird's pride and joy and often they will do feather maintenance before they eat or drink”.
To watch the falcons live go to: http://www.falconcam-cmnh.org/news.php Our thanks to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History for sponsoring the FalconCams and for the still.
Photos are courtesy of Scott Wright, volunteer peregrine nest monitor. They may be used by children for school and/or personal projects, but please give Mr. Wright photo credit. All others must contact Mr. Wright directly for permission to use his photos.
Mr. Webster concludes that we will probably never know what really happened….. “Though it is a disappointment that S/W will not have another 4 chick season, this is precisely why Peregrine Falcons have clutches of 3 or 4 eggs. This annual productivity compensates for the inevitable losses that occur with eggs, chicks, fledglings and juveniles. Clutch size is a balance between how many young the adults can successfully parent given available internal and environmental resources and the need to produce adequate numbers to sustain the population”. To read Mr. Webster’s entire explanation go to the front page at:
Incubation usually lasts 33 to 35 days from the date the last egg, or the second last, was laid. You can do the math - approximately when will the first chick hatch? As you monitor the FalconCam during incubation, you will almost always see a parent covering the precious eggs, and you will see a lot of pictures that look like this:
SW and Ranger live in Cleveland, Ohio. In this picture Ranger is watching over the nest.
By the 1970’s, the species peregrine falcon was extinct in Ohio and everywhere east of the Mississippi River in the United States, and the species was nearly extinct in the rest of the country. This was due to DDT, a pesticide that caused females to produce eggs with thin eggshells that would break under the weight of the adults during incubation. Peregrines are predators at the top of the food chain, and DDT and other chemicals in the environment build up and intensify along the food chain. DDT was banned in 1972, and the saving and restoration of this endangered species is a great success story. Today, you can probably locate a nestsite in almost every state. Why don’t you find a nestsite near you and monitor its activities?
Want to hear what an adult peregrine falcon sounds like? Go to:
Disturbance at the nestsite might have caused one of the parents to break an egg, or Ranger, being an inexperienced dad, might have accidentally broken the egg - but the FalconCam does not support this.
