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It started out like any Sunday morning in March - beautiful blue skies with a cool breeze.


Things got a little heated for awhile.


And they did the rest of their Sunday chores - work on the nest a bit, hang out in the nest off and on, and get a bite to eat near sunset....


And then shortly after sunset, Kay flew back to the tower...

AND THE BIG SIT COMMENCED!!!!!!!!!

March 8, 2009  around 9 pm, Kay delivered her first egg of the season.

Please add some screen captures, and hawksters, take it away.....

Egg-cellent, Catgirl--as only you could and should tell it! And we're OFF!

Beautiful, shiny new thread you guys have here!!!

Only bummer is I'm having major technical difficulties now with the hawk page. It won't complete loading at all in Safari, and then in Firefox, it loads off and on (hawk cam blinks on and off, in other words), and it t a k e s f o r e v e r t o u s e t h e c h a t thing !!!!!!! I can use SAFARI for THIS particular page (our thread posting area) and it loads just fine... but then I can't view the hawk cam without it blinking on and off, once I get it to show AT ALL (!) in another window (in FIREFOX)... What a hassle!!! I may just have to enjoy reading your posts, gang.... and wish Kay and Jay and new-egg-baby all the best, this season. Unless KJRH gets the bugs fixed.... I just don't know.... Best to all of you !!!!

A brief backstory...
Jay waits....  3-8-09, 7:31 p.m. 

Kay Sits!  3-8-09, 8:03 p.m.

Kay has a secret.  3-8-09, 9:07 p.m.

Kay shows off her secret.  3-8-09, 10:27 p.m. Capture by Socal

Joy in the Morning: the Prize 3-9-09, this capture from video, by Observer

Kay and her Accomplishment  3-9-09

It takes two, Baby!  3-9-09


Winken...

Blinken...

and Nod.

Kay's afternoon siesta, 3-9-09
(Thanks for the great closeups, Russell!)

I have a note from the Executive Director of the Sutton Avian Research Center with some factoids about our RTH family. Those of you who've been around for a year or more will know most of this, but for new visitors I thought it made a great summary. So here's what he says:

I just sent off another message re our server at OneNet to try to speed up our getting permission to give you the go ahead with the embedding deal. Yes, I have been tracking the RT egg in your nest since it was laid. Normally, the RTail female will lay every other day, but the clutch of a red-tail usually consists of a total of two to three eggs although can rarely be four, and extremely rarely one or five. Incubation lasts 28-32 days, and the female does most of the incubation although the male can do some. His job is primarily bringing in food, but both parents can participate in feeding with the female doing most, especially when the babies are young. The young leave the nest at about 44-48 days, with the smaller, male offspring growing up and flying first. By the way, as with most raptors, the males are about 1/3 smaller than the females when fully grown (called reversed sexual dimorphism). Red-tails in the wild normally prey mostly on small mammals such as rats, mice, and rabbits, along with snakes and some birds. Occasionally, some redtails will specialize on pigeons in cities where the prey can be trapped on building tops. This is the case of a famous pair on a hotel in NYC. But for the most part, redtails are not fast enough to catch other birds (which usually escape in three dimensions) and instead are adapted to catching mammals (which are left to two dimensions for escape—that is, until they take the third dimension via a burrow). Redtails often “still hunt”, as from an elevated perch such as a power pole along the highway, but they also can hunt from a soaring position while riding on a thermal, and then dive on prey below.

He goes on to give us a few pointers on how to refer to the birds on air. I've asked him if he'd be interested in fielding questions on our forum, or perhaps appointing a delegate from the ARC to join us... but I'm sure they're pretty busy, so no promises.

BTW yesterday's UNFORTUNATE incident with the camera was due to a power bump at the station, the encoding computer crashed. Sorry about that!

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(8-{)
Russell Mills
Online Content Director
KJRH-TV Channel 2
PO Box 2 Tulsa, OK 74101
(918) 748-1560

The FIRST and ONLY station in Oklahoma to broadcast local news in HD!

Thanks for the information Russell.  We can all use a refresher course in Redtail behavior.  This year is shaping up to be as exciting as last year, maybe better since we are not all dummies like last year (speaking for myself, of course.)!!!

Watching the eagle and the hawk will be twice as exciting.  I look forward to it.

3:22 PM-Lovely close up of Kay brooding. She looks bright and healthy and very alert.

3:22 - She gets up and the camera zooms in on The Egg, showing how Kay turns her talons under, like a gentle fist, to protect her precious egg.

I got some captures, but I am slow with this yet. Rusty. Been a year since I did captures.

I just watched BirdRescue's new video of Kay and Jay with their new egg, and saw next to it on the YouTube page, this older one from BirdRescue - about a RTH chick and a gust of wind. Thunder, of course, growing into her feathers and feet. What fun!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6XRRY8Hw84&feature=related

Grand name, perfect name for the new thread!

3:20 Kay stands, stretches her wings above her back, fluffs herself a bit, looks around, then repositions for another sit.  Short break to stretch I guess. :) And great closeups of the egg!

Nice job with the thread, everybody. Catgirl, you kicked it off in style. Bville, I love your little illustrated narratives.

Russell, thanks for the info and for fixing the streaming problem.

I'm curious how often the shifts change and how their shift lengths compare. Do they follow some sort of schedule, or is it all ad hoc (ad hawk?)?  Maybe after a few days of catching shift changes we can go back and figure it out.

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"Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one" –– A. J. Liebling

Thanks Russell for the info I can always use a refresher course. I was wondering tho if they're prelaying pangs/pains are similar to eagle's. Apparently the female eagle's feather's ruffle like a porcupine's quill's almost a shuddering more than usual ruffling of feathers. Also they're quite unsettled, almost agitated. Anyway I must keep a close watch on Kay and see if there's the same behaviour pattern alike to female eagle. Maybe the director could shed some insight on this topic, when he has a moment in his schedule. 

Hey all bird's lay egg's, so hopefully the video might catch Kay during egg #2!

Hopefully, we will be able to watch Kay closely for that feather behavior when she lays her second egg. Unfortunately the pictures from last night's workaround (thank you KJRH for the workaround!) really only showed her changing positions very very frequently. So I guess if we see her start to do that again, we can watch for porcupine feathers. And bobdmac. Great idea. Let's try to document the hand-offs, and who broods for how long. I loved the capture set from the old thread showing Jay getting restless at Brood Duty. He's a great provider and he DOES share babysitting duties, even if he doesn't decorate to Kay's preferences. Bless them both.

sallyls:

3:20 ....And great closeups of the egg!

The Moon, as seen from...no, wait...that's an egg!

center capture, from Sallyls

Compare the egg's size to that of the sycamore fruit.

Great shot. thank's ladies for posting it!! I'm goin' egga over this, so exciting to have them back home.

Great shots SallyLS! I messed mine up bigtime, and they weren't nearly as clear as yours, anyway. I need much more practice.

I am gone. Got to buy a new dryer. Sigh.

Storms (again) here tonight so my night watch coverage may be intermittent at best. Hopefully the live feed will stay up, and she will lay her second egg early in the night, as she did last night!