If you haven't been checking the webcam regularly I encourage you to go check it out now. The 3 eggs have hatched and we now have 3 healthy chicks!

Even though peregrines lay their eggs one every other day, all will hatch usually in less than 2 days. This is because the adults do not start incubating until the clutch is nearly completed (therefore all the eggs develop synchronously.) The chicks will start cheeping while still in the egg and it will take them up to 72 hours to get out of the shell from the time they first start to pip.

In photograph 1 you can see the female is doing what is called "brooding". She still sits over the chicks, shading them from the sun or keeping them warm at night. But she's not sitting low & tight such as during incubation. The daytime brooding behavior will last around a week , though it goes on longer during the night.

While the male will incubate the eggs (more during the early stages and less as times progresses), he will only infrequently brood the chicks. Because the male is smaller in size, he's not able to fit the chicks under him as well as the larger female. So, even though the male has not been spending all the time with the eggs and/or chicks, he has been doing the majority of the hunting for the family. (Typically with raptors, the male will do the majority of the hunting while the eggs or young is in the eyrie.) Photograph 2 shows the female feeding the 3 chicks at the Waukegan site.

Hopefully, as we visit our other sites, we'll see more hatching. Unfortunately we haven't seen the birds lately at Hyde Park, nor the skyway, or the River pair, and though we have had reports of the UIC birds copulating in mid April, we haven't found if they are nesting - at least they're not using their old ledge. We have confirmed a new pair at Lawndale and identified the female as Nitz, who fledged out of a nest in Milwaukee in 2001. (We don't know if Lawndale is breeding though.)

Check out that webcam!

Mary