Falcons hatch on UdeM tower
The falcon eggs are hatching in the UdeM tower nest box. The live cam isn’t up – that’s a recording from earlier this week. Notes from CTV.
CBC had a video report this week about different falcon eggs being moved to a nest box on the Mercier Bridge.
MarcG 09:03 on 2024-05-17 Permalink
Really sucks that the live cam went down right before the big event.
Kate 16:10 on 2024-05-17 Permalink
The live Youtube feed is back up as I type.
It’s so noisy. Is the nest right beside a big ventilation unit?
carswell 16:39 on 2024-05-17 Permalink
There are ventilation units of some sort on the ledges on which the UdeM nests are built but I don’t recall them being particularly noisy in previous years. However, there’s lots of construction work being doing on the campus. About a third of the pavillon principal is currently sheathed in scaffolding and plastic sheeting and the work is sometimes noisy — if the wind’s blowing in the right direction, I can hear it on my deck, which I’m guessing must be at least 600 m from the tower as the falcon flies. (It’s 250 m from the front door of my building to the metro-adjacent entrance to the escalators up to the chemin de la Tour.) Also, don’t discount wind noise, especially at that elevation.
Kate 17:12 on 2024-05-17 Permalink
Oh wow, the parents are both away, and only the hungry chicks are there, huddled together.
Are there any predators that would take the chance of snatching a falcon chick?
…A minute later, a parent came back with a bloody lump of something and is feeding the kids. The one on the far left looks kind of weak.
MarcG 09:43 on 2024-05-18 Permalink
@Kate: I just took a look at the cam and saw that you were chastised for a comment – I gotta know what you could have said to get wrist-slapped by falcon lovers!
Kate 10:19 on 2024-05-18 Permalink
I said, in French, that I wished I could send them a steak by drone.
MarcG 11:09 on 2024-05-18 Permalink
Haha. I guess it’s not a place for humour or they’re genuinely concerned people will send drones up there.
carswell 11:46 on 2024-05-18 Permalink
Ha!
Not sure how they pull it off without disturbing the parents, but the people looking after the nest boxes can and do access them regularly, so they could leave your steak right there. However, I’ve read that peregrines won’t touch meat they haven’t killed themselves. If so, releasing a few doves might be the compromise solution!
Seriously though, with its proximity to the cemetery, the Outremont summit, the campus woods and urban pigeons, food isn’t really in short supply.
I’ve seen them flying far overhead from my fifth-floor flat but only rarely. The only raptors I’ve seen at eye level here are kestrels. But they — along with lots of other fauna, including grosbeaks, finches and, once, a snowy owl — haven’t returned since the HEC2 destroyed the very wild woods that used to occupy its current site. The “urban forest” Abe Limonchick glibly promised would mitigate the loss is a farce — one species of tree planted in straight rows with nothing allowed to grow on the ground except grass, much of which has been obliterated by foot traffic and the resulting soil compaction. Have never seen a bird in it. Even squirrels mostly shun it.
Funny how the two latest HEC buildings have insouciantly destroyed green space, especially downtown, which has so little of it. Kind of puts the lie to their occasional musings about sustainability and climate change.