SOUTH BEND — The peregrine falcon nest atop the downtown County-Metropolis Constructing bears two brown eggs that would hatch within the subsequent month. As viewers can see via a live in-nest camera, they’re being nursed by a minimum of one newcomer to this picket field.
That comes with each some unhappy and hopeful information for 2 of the nest’s prior occupants.
In the meantime, the bald eagles nest at St. Patrick’s County Park has suffered one loss.
Right here’s what we all know.
Two eggs are seen within the bald eagle nest at St. Patrick’s County Park in South Bend via the College of Notre Dame digital camera on Monday, March 24, 2025.
What’s up with the eagles nest?
The eagles nest at St. Patrick’s has gone from three eggs, laid in late February, to simply two now. One of many eggs from the nest broke on Friday, March 21, and it gave the impression to be unviable (not ever going to hatch), in line with Brett Peters, who displays the live in-nest camera for the College of Notre Dame.
The 2 different eggs at St. Patrick’s nonetheless have an opportunity to hatch in late March or early April.
No matter occurred to Flash?
As for the falcons, Tribune followers can be unhappy to listen to that Flash, the male who fathered chicks in 2023 and 2024, was discovered lifeless on a highway in northwest Indiana in August 2024. He apparently was delivered to an animal hospital in Porter County, Ind.
The male peregrine falcon, Flash, checks on the remaining egg within the South Bend nest in spring of 2022.
We realized this from Mary Koher, a volunteer with Soarin’ Hawk Raptor Rehabilitation Center north of Fort Wayne. She mentioned the middle has been monitoring Flash’s whereabouts since he was born from falcon mother and father in downtown Fort Wayne’s nest.
She confirmed Flash’s destiny with a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
Flash first appeared within the South Bend nest in 2022, displaying up in a type of mating (or love?) triangle. Peace, the male for the prior 4 years, didn’t present up that spring as Flash took over. And the returning feminine, Maltese, discovered an intruder feminine who was making an attempt to take over after Maltese had laid her eggs.
Not one of the eggs in 2022 hatched. However two chicks hatched in each 2023 and 2024, all 4 of them the offspring of Flash.
No matter occurred to Elaine?
Indiana Audubon Government Director Brad Bumgardner bands the feminine peregrine falcon chick, Elaine, within the mechanical room on the high of the County-Metropolis Constructing in South Bend on Wednesday, Might 24, 2023.
Elaine, who was Flash’s daughter and one of many falcon chicks that hatched in 2023, has been making an attempt to hold on his legacy on two fronts.
Elaine has been discovered as an grownup visiting two totally different nest bins in 2024 and at the moment this 12 months. A kind of nests is on Great Spirit Bluff overlooking the Mississippi River close to La Crescent, Minnesota, and the opposite is throughout the river and some miles away on the U.S. Financial institution building in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Chicken digital camera watchers on the Bird Cams Around the World have been monitoring Elaine’s appearances at each nests.
Who’s within the South Bend nest now?
Chicken digital camera watchers at BCAW report that the male within the South Bend nest is banded (C/78) however unnamed. He was banded in 2022 at a nest at Grand Valley State College in Grand Rapids, the place he apparently hatched. That makes him a newcomer.
The feminine within the nest is unbanded and likewise is unnamed, simply as final 12 months’s feminine was.
When will the eggs hatch?
Specialists have mentioned that it sometimes takes 28 to 32 days for eggs to incubate earlier than they hatch. In South Bend’s case, that will depend on precisely when these eggs had been laid.
For comparability, last year’s eggs had been laid between March 21 and 25, then hatched on April 27 and 28.
How do they determine these falcons?
The information about each Flash (banded as M/52) and Elaine (U/09) had been confirmed due to the banding that repeatedly was executed on South Bend’s falcon chicks. Their numbers go right into a database that alert fowl watchers can observe because the raptors seem elsewhere.
See story and photograph gallery: Two South Bend falcon chicks banded and named. Welcome, Skip and Elaine.
However the almost annual banding in South Bend stopped in 2024 as a result of the state began to tug again on funding for it, doubtless due to new priorities since falcons had improved on Indiana’s checklist from “endangered” to “particular concern” in 2013, in line with Brad Bumgardner, govt director of the Indiana Audubon Society.
Discover columnist Joseph Dits on Fb at SBTOutdoorAdventures or 574-235-6158 or jdits@gannett.com.
This text initially appeared on South Bend Tribune: Falcons lay eggs in South Bend nest eagles lose one in Notre Dame camera
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