Three osplets!

Alma & Ossi's third chick hatched during the night, so here's a peek at the full clutch during a feeding:

(>ʌ<) (>ʌ<) (>ʌ<)

Wet buzzards, wobbly osplets, and mantling falconets

A rainy morning at the Cornell Red-tailed hawk nest.

[Warning for some screenshots showing prey, but only slightly and from a distance. The nest has gotten a lot tidier as the chicks have grown, as it usually does at this stage. Also a bit of dried blood on a chick.]

A few closeups for starters.

A pretty sunset

Pocket-sized lesbians

Well, it is almost Pride Month. Featuring Skye and Tumult from my plethora of raptor OCs, and a flag I not-so-coincidentally made to fit them both.

Two osplets!

Second chick has hatched at nest #1 of Satakunnan sääkset.

The new baby finished hatching early this morning. Here the egg shell has cracked open into two halves, but the little one has yet to crawl out from under it. 2-day-old sibling wobbling around in front of it steals the show.

Dad with the chicks, mom standing at the edge of the nest. A bit inconvenient spot the parents picked for that one piece of lichen, but the chicks are still mostly visible. The older sibling who can already hold its head up is demanding breakfast, and the new hatchling is getting acquainted with gravity, having fallen over onto its back (head is next to the still unhatched third egg).

Siblings waiting for a brooding shift change together.

Osplet!

Alma & Ossi's first chick of the season hatched during the night. First sighting was at 2:58am, but too dark to see much more than that some tiny thing is moving in the nest cup. Here are screenshots of the little one in the morning.

First good peek as mom gets up to adjust her position.

So smol.

They grow up so fast!

[warning for visible raptor prey in the screenshots]

Firstly, the estimated hatching day for the first Osprey chick at nest #1 of Satakunnan sääkset is tomorrow! It's been really stormy today, and the parents haven't given us many peeks at the eggs yet.

Alma standing, Ossi incubating the eggs.

Shift change. Ossi left, Alma right. No pip visible on the eggs, but it's hard to tell. There's chirpy noises that sound like a chick talking inside the egg, though.
 

Meanwhile at SWFL Bald Eagles, fledglings E17 and E18 have been away from the nest for a couple of days in a row for the first time (E17 was last seen on Sunday evening, E18 on Monday morning). They're old enough to start leaving on their big eagle adventure as independent juveniles, so it's possible they have. Stay safe out there!

Bigger powder puffs

The Royal Albatross chick has gotten so big since I last posted a screenshot of her!

She also has a name - Tiaki.

Exploring

Two of the Peregrine chicks I've been following had an expedition to the roof outside their nest box.

Oh so that's where all the poop they shoot out of the nest ends up. It's instinctive for baby raptors to try to avoid dirtying their nest, but their front yard is not so lucky.

Anyway, with the chicks newly banded, these two are the chicks with yellow and red leg bands. As the text on the screenshots indicates, a naming contest is underway, and all three chicks were determined in the banding to be males.

Looking around.

The smooth roof is a bit tricky to walk on when you're used to the gravel floor of the nest box.

Nestings at different stages

More screenshots of the Berkeley Peregrines.

Parent sighted!

It was mom Annie, returning home for the night. The chicks are too big to brood, and can thermoregulate, but she sleeps in the nest with them to guard them. As for the nest, unlike eagles, falcons don't really build nests, just dig a shallow spot for the eggs if there's even enough loose dirt at the cliffside - or in urban settings, tall building - that they pick for raising their young. Annie, Grinnell, and their chicks have a human-made nest box to scrape around in, but I've seen falcons in cities even nest on just a bare windowsill.

Parent with food sighted! Much higher priority!

Oh, and looks like banding will be later today for the Peregrine chicks.
ETA: Here's video of the banding. (Content warning for small remains of prey in the nest. And though the banding is done for a good reason the experience is inevitably scary for the wild birds, so if you want to turn up the volume to hear the scientists talking, note that the falcons can get Very Loud when frightened.) And here's live Q&A on the banding and other birb things.

I've also kept an eye on Satakunnan sääkset, a group of Osprey nests under observation in South-Western Finland. There are four nests, out of which at least two are occupied this year, with experienced pair Alma & Ossi having raised young for many years at nest #1, and newer pair Nuppu & Ahti at nest #3. Both nests are currently at incubation stage, with three eggs in each and hatching expected for the end of May (#1) and beginning of June (#3). I look forward to seeing the little osplets.

Most of the site about the Osprey nestcams are in Finnish, but you can find some pretty detailed graphs about the nests' history in English at "Pesinnät", and all of the available cameras are predictably under "Live".

Then some screenshots of the Cornell Redtails. Warning for clear view of prey, some of which are pretty gory, in all of the images.

Sprung

Carnivorous little powder puffs

A few screenshots from raptor nestcams other than the SWFL eagles for a change.

The Berkeley Peregrine falcon pair Annie and Grinnell's three three-week-old chicks, who are getting banded next week, presumably on camera if you want to catch that.

A messy but fluffy bunch.

One of the chicks exercising their wings, with a good look at the less fluffy underside of the wing. And pin feathers are well underway.

And some feeding shots from the Cornell Red-tailed hawk nest. The third chick only just hatched, so they are still brooded by their mom Big Red at pretty much all times other than when she gets up to feed them. The nest has a full pantry of various prey dad Arthur has brought, in this screenshot mostly blocked from view by mom. Warning that the rest of the screenshots will show gory prey, but if you don't mind that the chicks are very adorable.

Paparazzi shots of a hare

JP/W raptor nesting thoughts

Some speculations on Jurassic Park Velociraptor nesting and pack composition, mostly based on the two JP sequels, in which we see raptor packs that are living in the wild and confirmed to consist of animals of more than one sex.

(spoilers for twose movies, and for the other JP/W ones a bit as well)

I've concluded earlier that each sequel possibly features two female raptors, and that with JP3 it actually looks certain that it does. Most of the raptors seen (clearly) on screen are males, though. How representative is that of the packs in general?