"Don't worry", I said to the cockatoo this evening, "This heat'll pass..."...
"Oh, yeah...", he said...
"Yeah", I said..."Somewhere roundabout April...", ha ha.
๐
Good morning to the everything thread ... 
It's a few weeks since I visited this thread so it will take a while to read through .. so good to see you all here.
Busy busy busy as always .. preparations for the soiree party at the beginning of December with live music so we took full advantage of the long weekend which means all the christmas decorations are up. So glad we only do that once each year, it takes many (happy) hours. Thankfully, all the christmas sewing was done at the beginning of the year!
I'll try to keep up a little more on this thread.
So, the Peregrine fledglings are developing nicely.
Does anyone want to guess whether they are male or female?
In this picture, Mariah is on the left, and Kaver is on the right. The very first thing youโll notice is the difference in size between the two Peregrines. Mariah is a much larger bird than Kaver. In fact, in most birds of prey including falcons, hawks, eagles and owls, the female is larger than the male.
When one sex is larger than the other, scientists call it sexual dimorphism. Many animals exhibit sexual dimorphism inlcuding humans, but for us it is the males who are generally larger. In raptors, the female is larger. This difference in size even influences what we call male and female falcons. Only the female Peregrine is called a falcon. The male peregrine is called a tiercel. Tiercel comes from the latin word tertius, which means โone-thirdโ, because the male is typically 1/3 smaller than the female.
When Mariah and Kaver are side by side itโs easy to tell whoโs who by their size. When theyโre alone, itโs a little harder, but not too much. If you can see them on the Falconcamโs high resolution Main Camera, youโll notice some differences in their features that can help.
After her size, the next thing to notice about Mariah is the white stripe that runs between her eyes, just above the yellow part of her bill. That part is called the cere, and among other things, its where her nostrils are. Most times if youโre looking at Mariahโs face youโll be able to see the white feathers above her cere. Kaver doesnโt have a stripe above his cere, so thatโs a pretty easy way to tell them apart.
Next is the shape of the head. The top of Mariahโs head is a bit flatter than Kaverโs. One of the distinctive features of falcons is their head coloring. Peregrines have a dark โhoodโ and malar stripes. The malar stripes are the dark patches on their cheeks that resemble sideburns. The combination of dark hood and malar stripes makes it look like the Peregrine is wearing a helmet. Mariahโs malar stripes are longer than Kaverโs.
Itโs hard to tell in our picture above, but Kaverโs helmet is darker than Mariahโs. In brighter light Kaverโs helmet looks almost black, while Mariahโs almost always appears slate gray, with white highlights
