Today was banding day for the peregrine falcon chicks at San Jose City Hall. It official, there are 2 girls and 1 boy. The event started around 8am when Brian of the SCPBRG repelled down to the ledge containing the nest box. He then proceeded to band each of the chicks while Clara, the mother, kept swooping in hoping to scare the intruder away. I managed to watch the entire event on the web cam, and I believe additional video footage from Brian’s helmet cam will be posted eventually. The picture on the left was taken by Nick Dunlop from the roof of City Hall. There are (currently) additional photos on the Mayor’s webpage.

On Sunday while in the kitchen, I heard a persistent chirping noise in the back yard. I looked outside a few times, but didn’t see anything. Eventually, I noticed a little black phoebe fledgling sitting on the grill calling to be fed. I managed to get a few shots through the sliding glass door, but it was partially obscured by the grill. While I was shooting, I noticed it open its mouth real wide and was make extra noise. I got a shot of the open mouth (see picture on right), but missed what happened next. One of the parents swooped in, jammed some food in the mouth and flew off again. It happened so fast. I saw the feeding a couple more times, but never did manage to get a photo. Eventually the phoebe flew to the back fence and kept calling. After another food exchange, the fledgling followed the parent out of view. I have seen the fledgling a couple tims since then. It seems to be doing well.

In the mean time, the San Jose City Hall peregrines are growing rapidly. They are starting to hop around a bit, and one has even ventured outside the nest box. I believe they will be banded for identification purposes on Friday. Maybe I’ll go downtown to watch. You can’t really see the banding from the ground, but you can see the parents swooping and calling to scare away the intruder. It should be interesting.

No, it’s not an off-season NFL match up. Mary and I have been following both the downtown San Jose Falcons and the Channel Islands National Park Eagles webcams. It’s not a competition of course, other than maybe for our DSL bandwidth. Both webcams are the best we’ve found for their species.

The San Jose Falcons nest on the 18th floor of City Hall. A nest box was placed there in 2006 after a male (Jose) and female (Clara) had been seen frequenting the area. The pair took up residence and had 3 offspring in 2007. This year, there’s a new male (Carlos) and three new little chicks. The nest and webcam are monitored by the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group. Last year one of their staff repelled down from the roof to band the chicks. I imagine that will happen again in the next month or so. Of course the best thing about these falcons is we can head to downtown to San Jose and see them flying around. We managed to see two of the three chicks fledge last year and hope to do as well this year. Even if we don’t see them fledge, we’ll definitely enjoy watching them learn to fly around downtown San Jose.

The Channel Islands Eagles nest on Santa Cruz Island in Channel Islands National Park. The pair of eagles started nesting there in 2006. The male (K-10) and female (K-26) were both fostered on Catalina Island in 2001 and 2002 respectively. There were the first pair to hatch an egg on the Channel Islands in more than 50 years. The camera setup had to be backpacked to the site, which doesn’t sound like much until you add the microwave dish, solar array and battery! The camera is pretty high quality and includes sounds. There are currently two chicks in the nest born in early April. “Channel Islands Live” is made possible by the Ventura County Office of Education and Channel Islands National Park.

I’ve been a bit under the weather the past few days, but I still managed to have a nice, relaxing weekend. I stayed home and rested Saturday morning while Mary was out hiking. In the afternoon we visited Don Edwards to see some wildlife. There are a lot of nesting shorebirds there again, which is really great. We really enjoy seeing the American avocets and black-necked stilts. We’re hoping to see some chicks running around there soon. We have seen quite a few duckling and gosling and some killdeer eggs. There are also at least a couple of barn owlets in the next box near the education center. We saw this fairly bold squirrel (picture on right) on the boardwalk around Chicago Marsh.

In our explorations near by Don Edwards, we’ve encountered numerous burrowing owls, especially at the so-called “magic fence”. Click the picture on the right for more pictures of the burrowing owls. Yesterday we made a very odd discovery near the “magic fence”. While watching the owls, we notices a pure white bunny that was obviously out of place. Apparently it has escaped from its home and is making a living here. We saw it again on Sunday. We were thinking about trying to catch it, but Sunday evening we saw some people out there trying to get it back home. Hopefully they were successful.

The climax of the weekend was learning about a pair of bald eagles nesting near the Calaveras Reservoir. We went to investigate and it turned out to be true. They have a huge nest up in a transmission tower right next to the reservoir. Mary and I watched them for nearly two hours, and met some really nice people there to see the eagles as well. Mary and I always think we have to go way up to Northern California to see bald eagles. It was quite a nice surprise to learn of a pair nesting successfully so near by. Hopefully we’ll have an opportunity to witness the eaglets before they get too big and fly off to parts unknown.

The San Jose peregrines are doing well. Only three of the four eggs hatched, but so far those three are doing quite well. They and their parents, Clara and Carlos, are bringing much joy to the hundreds of people watching their web cam. I’m looking forward to watching them fledge and explore downtown San Jose in a month or so.

It’s Earth Day 2008, and there will be a celebration at the San Jose City Plaza. Even more importantly, the peregrine falcon eggs at the City Hall nest have started to hatch!. Three of the four have hatched so far. Breakfast was served at 7am (see the photo on the right from the SCPBRG’s Flickr page). The hatching even made the news this morning, with coverage by KPIX CBS5 and KGO ABC7. As always, you can watch the live action on the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group’s Nest Cam- San Jose. Hopefully egg number four will hatch soon and we’ll have four lovely white fluff balls to enjoy for a while.