Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2013 10:41 am
Posts: 12697
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 Oh darn T! Last year we could read South Bend Tribune articles from here when I posted the link. I'll copy and paste the article to here. You all just will not be able to see the photos, but they are little cuties! BBIAB...
And here it is:Two South Bend falcon chicks banded and named. Welcome, Skip and Elaine.Joseph DitsSouth Bend Tribune
Published 11:05 a.m. ET May 25, 2023 | Updated 12:11 p.m. ET May 25,2023
"SOUTH BEND — Two peregrine falcon chicks squawked as they let a handful of humans take them out of their nest box on Wednesday, place identifying bands on their legs and name them Skip and Elaine.
They are the only two that hatched out of five eggs laid in the wooden box on the roof of the County-City Building this spring. And they’re growing fast. In a week, Indiana Audubon Executive Director Brad Bumgardner said, the white fuzz around their healthy bodies will give way to brown feathers. And in two to three weeks, they’ll start testing their abilities to fly.
Bumgardner led a handful of helpers and spectators to the roof Wednesday for the annual rite of chick banding. He and Richard Garrett, who drove up from his home in central Indiana, having won the chance to be here at a fundraiser, pulled the two young falcons from the box as their parents complained and swirled overhead.
Dad is Flash, a male who appeared at the nest last year. Mom is an unbanded bird and, thus, is unnamed so far. As viewers witnessed on the live online camera at falcam.southbendin.gov, Flash and the prior reigning female, Maltese, had produced four eggs last year, but none of them hatched.
The humans nestled the new chicks cozily in a five-gallon bucket and toted them into the rooftop mechanical room. Bumgardner took the first bird and, by looking at its size and at the length of its legs, determined it to be a female. Female falcons are typically larger than males. He clasped two identifying metal bands on her so that, where ever she ends up as an adult, she can be tracked. That’s how experts know that the father, Flash, had come from the nest box in downtown Fort Wayne.
This female has a blue band marked “U9.”
Nicole Harmon, director of Humane Indiana Wildlife, a Valparaiso nonprofit that does wildlife rehab, banded the second bird, a male now marked “U10.”
And so the female became Elaine and the male Skip — names that emerged from a contest that Indiana Audubon held for this nest over the past month. Dozens of names were suggested through the contest website, followed by hundreds of votes at the site and on social media. The winning two pay homage to the late Elaine “Skip” Gehring of Whiting, Ind., an Audubon supporter and bird watcher who died one year ago at age 95.
The third winning name in the contest was Athena. If the falcons’ mother would have come close enough to safely grab, Bumgardner said, he could have banded and named her on Wednesday, too.
Bumgardner said this was the optimal time for banding. The young birds’ legs are as big as they’ll get, so he knows the bands will continue to fit.
Last week, the three chicks in the nest atop the Indiana Michigan Power Center in downtown Fort Wayne were banded, too, taking names that kids at the Boys & Girls Club of Fort Wayne thought of — then were selected after more than 1,800 votes: Marshmallow, Squirt and Stewart."
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FAQ
Hey T, feed just a little less than 1 hour ago by Mom! They were famished!!
I saw him wipe the cam lens very quickly. I have not seen Flash today, but going down the DVR it is so tight and easy to miss things. Will try again tomorrow to see Flash.
I was just watching mom feed the babies. She does seem a little absent minded….she pulled off some prey and swung her head toward the chicks and stopped. The chicks were waiting for her to give it to one of them and when she still didn’t move one just reached in and grabbed it!
I continued to try to find Flash per the DVR today, but as of now have been unsuccessful. She's flying up with the prey to the far rail, but he could be handing it off from the roof on the other side of the nest box or somewhere else out of our view. 
) To see the photos in the gallery just right click where indicated. 
Hi SWINWK- yeah the newspaper wouldn’t let me use your link to view the information. My paper does the same thing….I pulled the cam back about 3 hours to find mom feeding the chicks. I did not see Flash, but at one point she did jump up on the ledge and seem to grab more prey out of thin air. Got to be Flash, right?
I pulled back the DVR to see what Chip and Elaine were up to today, and did you notice that 2 times Chip jumped up on the ledge?? I think he was asking his parents for more prey….
