Hamilton’s falconwatch says downtown peregrines seen with egg

The group watching over a pair of peregrine falcons living atop the Sheraton Hotel say they’ve spotted an egg, beating a record for the earliest ever seen from a couple at the downtown Hamilton in a given year.

The Hamilton Community Peregrine Project (HCPP) says McKeever and Judson rolled an egg into view just a few days ago, beating a 2020 record set for the earliest one has ever been seen in a mating season.

“Most of the time we still can’t see it. In some photos we can see just a glimpse of brown. In others it is not visible at all. But it is there,” watchers wrote in an update on Sunday.

The falcons moved onto an 18th floor ‘scrape’ at the Sheraton in early 2022, which has been a nesting spot for the species over the last 29 years now.

Falcon Watch Coordinator Christa Jackson says the early arrival only beats the all-time record, on March 18, 2020, by one day.

Jackson says the ledge at the Sheraton has hosted some 68 babies over almost three decades.

“Most of them are … eggs laid that were laid there,” she explained.

“There were two different years we had two eggs each time that were snuck into the nest from other falcon nests that had to be relocated.”

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McKeever arrived in the Hamilton area in January 2022 from the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor shortly after the death of Lily, the hotel ledge’s previous resident female.

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Judson, McKeever’s mate, arrived in Hamilton from Buffalo at the end of the nesting season in 2021 and the pair had four chicks during that mating season.

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They had another four chicks born in late April of last year named Kirkendall, Gibson, Stipley and Delta.

Falcon eggs usually hatch 30 to 34 days after being laid by a female, according to the Canadian Peregrine Foundation.

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Jackson says usually four eggs is the maximum a female falcon lays in a year, however, she has heard stories of some producing five.

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“I don’t believe we’ve ever had more than four in the history of all the eggs in Hamilton, said jackson.

“It’s always been four or under.”If the incubation is successful, the new chicks could be seen as early as the last week of April.