Surprise visitors

After being absent from the nest ledge a few days, the falcons (especially Scout) are making an appearance again. But first, on Wednesday two pigeons were seen on the ledge!!! Make that very BRAVE pigeons! Obviously, the peregrines were away from the immediate area for a brief time that the pigeons could stop by safely, otherwise they likely could have been lunch!

Since Wednesday, Scout has been checking in and even working on the scrape. Today she perched on the nestbox camera housing for about an hour. This is a good sign in that it would indicate that she is still interested in the nest box on the Rhodes Tower (vs. moving to a new site within the downtown area). But does it mean there will be a 2nd clutch? Not necessarily. Scraping is part of the territorial process--in fact, after young have fledged from the nest successfully the adults will go back into the nest box in late summer and scrape in the gravel when we know they have no intention of nesting again until the next season. It is definitely a good sign that Scout is scraping now, but it is not guaranteed we'll see more eggs this year. We'll just have to wait until we see eggs (or not) to know for sure...! As for the eggs from the first clutch, I hope to be able to find out next week if they were fertile. I will post the information as soon as I know.