Against my better judgement, I just watched it on the ten website.
They had streaked breast plumage rather than barred, and at one point he said
the first one was "a young adult, from the plumage", so he was aware of the
plumage difference. But I wasn't able to see anything that would indicate they
might not have fledged yet. Perhaps a tiny bit of down on top of the head?
I assume they couldn't be breeding in that plumage. How old would they have to
be?
He may have been fooled by the fact that the building staff captured them, yet
the nest was 20m below the roof of a high building. No matter where they were
caught, roof or ground, they could only have flown there, yet couldn't or
wouldn't fly when approached. To someone who didn't know what stage they were
at, that wouldn't really add up to them being fledglings.
He may have simply believed the staff's opinion that they were the adults, and
then the need to include something in the show other than more bloody dogs took
over.
For those who can't be bothered watching it on the web site, all 5 minutes or
so of it, interspersed with 55 minutes of ads and dog kissing, in an interface
that doesn't allow fast forward or rewind, they were released on top of the
building in the last minute of the show. One flew off and began soaring, the
other glided to the roof of a nearby building. That seemed like a risky process
with birds that might not be able to fly, but might be frightened enough to try.
The birds were fed for a few days, and one was treated with antibiotics for
"thrush", so probably no harm done? Do peregrines abandon their young if
they've been handled like this? Do they still feed them after fledging?
Peter Shute
Sent from my iPad
> On 25 Nov 2013, at 12:03 pm, "Peter Ormay" <> wrote:
>
> I saw that Bondi Vet show and got the impression that he mistook the
> juvenile falcons for adults or just made up a story out of ignorance. The
> adults were clearly buzzing him. He ever asked for a hard hat.
>
>
>
> What I missed in the story was where the supposedly injured falcons came
> from. Were they collected at ground level?
>
> Peter
>
>
>
> From: Philip Veerman
> Sent: Sunday, 24 November 2013 11:36 PM
> To: ; 'COG Chatline'
> Subject: [canberrabirds] Peregrine Falcons on Bondi VET (Channel 10 TV)
>
>
>
> I saw bits of this story yesterday in between other things but I couldn't
> work out what was supposed to be happening. He had a family of Peregrine
> Falcons that were nesting in some building in Sydney, that were supposedly
> having some problems (that I missed hearing what he thought that was) but
> then he had two clearly young birds (by their plumage) taken from there that
> looked like they were probably about to fledge. The story seemed to me to be
> that he thought these two were the adult breeding pair, which they clearly
> weren't (both showing all the features of juvenal plumage) and that
> something was wrong with them, but they looked fine. Then when looking in
> the nest site he couldn't work out where the chicks were (but he had them in
> a box). The footage also cut away to what were clearly the adults flying
> around the nest site as they normally do. So I was lost as to the message he
> was trying to tell. It seemed completely wonky to me. He seemed surprised
> that these two birds seemed reluctant to fly but it makes sense that they
> probably had never flown before. Did anyone who saw this make better sense
> of it than I did? Of course there is no mechanism that I can see to send
> this message to the show.
>
> Philip
>
> ===============================
>
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
> send the message:
> unsubscribe
> (in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
> to:
>
> http://birding-aus.org
> ===============================
===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to:
http://birding-aus.org
===============================
|
