Juvenile

Last Day of the Obsession.

Juvenile
Christmas eve and all my chores and shopping complete, I decided to go and have some chill out time with the falcons. All the other photogs were busy and I was there alone. I kept my eye on the nest area and didn’t see any movement. The two parent birds were high up on the branches. Then I saw some flapping just over the hill at the top.

Juvenile

I couldn’t identify what was doing it until to my surprise it flapped around to the front of the tree. It was the chick! Though you could hardly call it a chick anymore, other than a few bits of fluff, it looks almost the size of the adult birds. I watched (and clicked) as it made its way up the tree to the branches at the top.

Juvenile

The images are not great due to being so far away. I have had to crop them quite severely to get something to post but I did capture them and that was the ultimate goal. I have what I waited so long for and now I can happily move on to the next obsession. I am pretty sure that is going to be the titipounamu at Zealandia 🙂 I have made new friends at the falcons and hope that we can keep in contact now the excitement is over. It was a fun couple of months.

This last image is the male adult heading off to hunt.  As he flew off I packed up my gear and headed home.  I don’t know if there was more than one chick in the nest but I doubt it.  The whole time I was there the adults didn’t take any food to the nest at all.  I look forward to repeating this experience next year if the falcons nest in the same area again. Hope you all had a good day yesterday and don’t spend too much in the sales today!

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