Bird Cams Around the World

I just went through the history of photos to see if there was anything identifiable with these falcons. What I can tell you for sure is that it is the same little male with the green and red bands that's been visiting the box since February. I could not really find any pics of the resident male anywhere, so its hard to tell who the green banded male was fighting. There was a resident female or male there on 3/9, and I'm assuming its the female since the right hand band is clearly silver, and Kim has said the male band looks black. Also, that falcon on 3/9 has very orange (vs yellow) talons, which the resident female seems to have as well. Is it possible the bigger male today is the resident male? And maybe the resident female is still resident? There are pics from 3-5 with a falcon eating that looks to be a female with a red band on the right, so I guess we need to look for that....but the resident female (or male) has been seen since.

hmmmmmmmmmm.....

To the best of my knowledge, the resident female hasn't been around for at least a couple weeks. I think the bird you're seeing with the silvery band is the male. The band on his left leg is black over red but the red is kind of darkish looking.

This morning is the first time I've seen a male bird with a black over green band in several weeks. Have you seen him recently?

I printed a bunch, but not all, from the forum. There is one from 3/9 and one of the resident female or male on that date.

3/10 is the latest I can see on here.

That would be the resident male then. We're fairly certain we have a new female who will be nesting here this year and it looks like we might end up with a new male although our guy is certainly putting up a good fight!

Our male was just in the nestbox!

I just got a call from Craig Koppie who told me someone found the body of our resident female bird.
Apparently she's been dead for a while.

Very sorry to hear that Kim...

I'm still very curious as to what happened to her. Hopefully Craig will be able to tell how long she's been dead and what killed her. It's possible that the bird I thought was our female, wasn't her after all, and that she's been dead since last May when an intruder was first spotted at our nest site.

I'm likewise curious to hear as much as Craig has to tell us. At 9:00 in the morning of Monday, November 2, 2009 what I believe to have been the old female screamed "Cack! Cack! Cack!", took off from the nest building and flew several blocks out of sight. In an email to Kim and others, I speculated that she might have been after a golden eagle that I couldn't see. Anthony Gonzon, a DNREC biologist and part of our falcon group here, responded to my email as follows: "With as much time as I have spent in Wilmington recently, I would like to note that on several days (10/28, 10/29, 11/3, and 11/4) I also observed the birds foraging above the city skyline – however on all of those days I observed 3 –not 2 – PEFA in the air. Several times I observed acts of aggression between two of the birds with pursuit and hard diving. I am betting that Greg’s observation of the female acting aggressively might have been the result of the third wheel coming into view." On Nov. 16 my partner David Brown saw something similar. Since mid November the first intrusion that I am aware of was March 1 (Kim posted my email of that day above). My hunch is that the old female lasted until this month, and that it was the females fighting on March 1. But my hunch will be trumped by any more evidence we get.

Oh my! Such drama here today with the horrendous fight in the nest box, and then such sadness with the news about the resident female. I was so sorry to hear that unexpected news.

Before I forget, I want to extend a big thanks to Kim for providing the alternate cam link this morning, to Greg for all his detailed on-site reports, to Ingrid for capturing and posting her video, and to everyone else for their pictures and observations. I was away most of the day, so I really appreciate all the posts everyone else made. Thank you all!

Two falcons are back in the nest box now. I hope it's the female and a male, and not two males like before.

I don't know which falcons these were, but they were both there for a couple of minutes. Then the one on the left flew out of the box.

A pair was just in the nest box. Does it look like they're bowing?

I sure hope they were bowing!