Waukegan Hatches?
Mary and I were supposed to go out to a few sites this morning, but the pouring rain canceled our plans. It’s really been nasty here in Chicago!
It has given me a chance to catch up on bat fly and scholarship committee (my third job now) stuff, so that’s been beneficial. As well, I’ve been able to have the Evanston and Waukegan webcams open all day, so I’ve been checking in on those every so often.
About an hour ago, so 2:30ish, the adult female started nuzzling under her breast feathers. At some point, I saw a little white blur pop out (as you can see in the bottom picture). It was out for a few seconds and then she nuzzled it back underneath her.
So, there you go. I’ll give it an …. 80% chance that we have a Waukegan baby. She laid on March 25th, so that’s 36 days, which works out shiny.
Our Evanston female left the nest just once while I was watching today and there were still four eggs, so no babies yet. However, Evanston didn’t have their first egg until March 28th, so we’re on day 33 of incubation now. The nest will bear watching for the next few days as we will doubtless have some new predatory Evanstonian’s soon.
As for the rest, nothing new and exciting to report. I do have some exciting news for this site, though! Two Chicago neighborhood blogs gave us a mention — Sloopin, a blog about the South Loop and Uptown Update, a blog about the Uptown neighborhood in the north of our fair city. Thanks for the mention, guys! Hopefully, that will introduce a few more Chicagoans to some of our area’s beautiful wild creatures.
I have to give a special thanks to the folks at Sloopin. Since we still haven’t been able to pin down where or IF the museum/south loop pair has decided to nest this year, I asked them for a favor. Boy, did they deliver. At my behest, Sloopin posted a call to South Loop residents to keep their eyes open and let us know if they see any falcon activity in the area. This is phenomenal since the people that live in all of those high rises have a much better perspective than we do schlepping around on the ground AND they are obviously down there a lot more than we can be. So, keep your fingers crossed! I thought that was damned decent of Sloopin – made my heart all warm and such. Thanks, Sloopin!
So, that’s all for now! Congrats, Waukegan!
Chicago Peregrine Falcon Blog 