Bird Cams Around the World

May 31 report
First Blue: I left around 7pm yesterday evening but Blue was not finished for the day. It was quite warm and is light until well after 8pm. And just a note about the area. Last year the young moved along Sansome Street towards the TransAmerica Pyramid and probably North across the Golden Gate Bridge. Val and Cany also used the Pyramid as a roosting spot and everyone enjoyed flying in the thermals around the building. This year the Pyramid is being extensively renovated including the exterior. Now we are seeing them flying East along California Street toward the Embarcadero which puts them back into the PGE territory (Spear Tower, PGE, the Matson Bldg, USBank).



Around 8pm last night Val and Canyon went hunting toward the Embarcadero; at the time Blue's whereabouts were unknown. The next sighting was Blue carrying a huge prey in his talons. That meant that the parent did a mid air food transfer with Blue. Now Blue is flying quite well but the unknown and probably unexpected weight of the prey meant that Blue was losing altitude as he attempted to bring the prey back along California and so unfortunately, he dropped it on the sidewalk. The watchers were all scrambling at this point but he was flying so fast that they only saw bits and pieces of the action, and they found the prey. We don't know where he spent the night.



Now to this morning. Red and Yellow were brought back to the nest ledge around 10am. Canyon was in the area and when the two materialized on the nest ledge he went into defensive mode, kakking and flying until he realized that it was not intruders but his young. He landed on the ledge with them and they mantled and did not chase him so everyone settled down. Canyon spent most of the day sitting on various buildings where he could watch over the nest ledge.



At 10:40am, Red decided to fly. He just took off with little warning, flew 1/2 block south, turned east, checked out one highrise window and continued on toward the Embarcadero. I stayed put while others went to look for him. It wasn't until 1:20pm when he was spotted on the highest point of the Matson Building cupola with brother Blue. So now we have two young fledged and flying well. Val brought food to them so they had a good (although do it yourself) meal. There are plenty of roosting spots on the cupola and so they are probably spending the night there.



As of 8:45pm Yellow has still not flown off the nest ledge. He spent most of the day in view on the ledge occasionally stepping back out of sight and finally settled down and out of sight.



Barbara

I hope yellow is o.k.

sat june1
Birds are early risers so I wasn't surprised when I didn't find Yellow on the nest ledge. I also didn't find him on any of the surrounding buildings when I arrived about 10:30am. I started to walk the area in the direction of the PGE building and fairly quickly found 2 on the Matson cupola and one on the roof of PGE. I met up with another watcher and she confirmed that she had seen two on Matson but not the one on PGE - and of course the one on PGE had disappeared. It took a few hours before one was spotted across Market Street on a building near PGE. We decided to move to the south side of Market St. where we could watch both the cupola, PGE, and the building with the one young. During the late afternoon there was a little flying and a lot of head and tail bobbing, and Val brought food to a single bird on the cupola. Surprisingly the food delivery did not rouse the other two (everyone is well fed!). Around 5pm two of the watchers definitely saw three young - two on 333 Market and one on the cupola. Soon after while taking a picture through a scope, one of the watchers got a great picture of Yellow when he stretched showing his leg with the yellow tape. Needless to say we were all excited but we were still a little unsure as we were back to seeing just two birds at a time. Then came another great picture when one stepped out from behind the window washing equipment just as a photo of his brother was being taken and while others had their eye on the one on the cupola. Now there was no doubt. All three have successfully fledged.

They will probably start roosting on PGE or Spear tower and use the thermals around Spear for flight training. Canyon always roosted on Spear and Val of course sat on the nest ledge. All of the young in the past could be seen whipping around the tower and playing. The window ledges provide the best roosting spot because they can tuck into a corner, head and chest in, with just their slate gray back fading into the night. They become impossible to see.

I will go tomorrow, late afternoon and as I have time next week and let you know how they are doing.

Barbara