FalconCam Project

Our peregrine family are busying themselves around campus and making quite a racket at the moment, although very tough to catch them on camera. Staff are reporting being deafened during classes in the teaching areas as the youngsters harass and learn from Beau and Swift.

On Tuesday evening one of the male youngsters and Rosie, the young female, were spotted sitting in the box, no doubt having finished off dinner which can still be seen as a large pile of flight feathers scattered across the view. We’ve also found remains of a crimson rosella and a feral pigeon below around the trees so the diet is varied.

Basic spotting will be undertaken over the Christmas/New Year break. Best wishes to all our viewers….

A big thanks must go out to everyone who has kept up with our peregrine falcon project over the many months and years. In this last 12 month period we’ve achieved over 7000 website hits from all corners of the earth. We’re very pleased with the coverage, both online as well as in the local news media … if only our falcon family knew of their own celebrity!

Another big 2009 thankyou goes out once more to our friends at 30 Squadron RAAF who have provided so much support for this project. A new web page is to be dedicated on this website very shortly about the Squadron and its wonderful members.

If you have any suggestions for us, in terms of website content, or better ways of doing things (inside of the current WordPress system) please use the “Contact Us” form down to the right. Most happy to hear from you!

A very Merry Christmas to you all for 2009 …

Apologies for few photos available at the moment of our peregrines – we hear a lot up in the trees but any visuals are normally 100‘s of metres away, and about the same in altitude! Great to see all three fledglings have been identified.

The last few days have drawn many comments from campus staff about the racket going on up in the surrounding gum and pine trees as the youngsters are no doubt keeping mum and dad – Swift and Beau – in line for dinner. Various aeronautical expeditions are undertaken during daylight hours and on Friday we were treated to a display of flying lessons where an adult would head for the horizon, closely followed by a vigorously flapping youngster complaining and trying to keep up.

With bad hot, drought conditions in the local Orange region at the moment there will be slim food pickings during the day but no doubt most wildlife will surface as the heat dies down in the evenings. With any luck this summer’s recent large bush and grassfires won’t affect the hunting grounds too much; always a consideration when vast tracts of land are burnt out.

(news post entry by Cilla Kinross)

I’ve been running around like mother hen as we have had a few dramas with our peregrine fledglings either getting behind, not getting enough food, sweltering in the heat wave, then getting ahead of themselves and taking off before the proper flying lessons were provided by Mum (Swift) and Dad (Beau).  One young (very naughty male) was recaptured near the new Dentistry Building on the ground after a ‘gliding’ mishap and popped back in the box and I was a bit worried about him as he took off again that afternoon (but could fly a bit, obviously, otherwise would be deaded).

The good news is that ALL THREE fledglings are alive and well (sitting in big old pines in the old fauna reserve between the Orange campus Dentistry Building and Chardonnay wing) and starting to fly properly, guided by the parents. I clearly saw each individual (Ronnie, Scottee and Rosie) sitting in their roosts.   You can tell them (with binoculars) from the adults as they have brownish spots right up to the chin, whereas the adults have white throats and thin grey stripes across their chests.

I don’t recommend going near them as it upsets them a lot (they really HATE people, I have to say; no gratitude at all for provision of nice nest box!), which distracts them from their proper business of learning to hunt,  and also you might get ‘bombed’; unlikely, but it  wouldn’t be nice (300 km an hour and very large strong feet!). Peregrine falcon banders who go to the actual nests have to wear hard hats for protection.

A big sigh of relief!