An Egg in Harrisburg
After a very distressing night watching CNN's coverage of the quake in Japan and the ensuing tsunami, I tuned in to the falcon cam for some relief and was not disappointed. Sometime between full dark last night and 6:30 this morning, New Girl laid her first egg. As NG is by all indications very young, it remains to be seen if her eggs will hatch this year. Female falcons have been known to produce fertile eggs as young as one year, but generally they are 2-3 years old when they reach reproductive maturity. She was probably hatched in 2009, although we don't know for sure, so it's iffy. But she has settled our worries that she might choose a different spot to lay eggs, and appears to have the general idea what she is supposed to do with the egg, although it looks as if she may have chipped this first one with her beak in her efforts to position it just so. In any case, she timed the arrival of the egg for my friend J's birthday, and brightened what would have otherwise been a very somber day. She should deliver another one on Sunday morning if she follow typical falcon egg production patterns. Falcon season is on! Let the fun commence!