Here are some links I find useful in watching this nest, which I've done for 2012, 2013, and now 2014.

This is the cam link in the All About Birds site, which is useful for the Cam 2 link below the main cam. http://cams.allaboutbirds.org/channel/16/Red-tailed_Hawks/

This is the direct Cam 2 link. http://www.allaboutbirds.org/page.aspx?pid=2469

This is the main cam on livestream, which is useful for clicking on < > to get a larger picture, or for popping out the image. http://www.livestream.com/cornellhawks

This is their twitter feed for up to the minute information. https://twitter.com/cornellhawks

This is Elly’s Blog, which is no longer being updated, but has a lot of excellent information. http://rth-nestcam-cu.blogspot.com/

This is a spreadsheet listing all the saved videos which is updated continuously. I believe ncaerie takes care of this. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?...p=sharing#gid=0

Right now at 16:26, I see a good pip in egg #3 with the beak moving visible inside the hole. My opinion of E1 and E2 so far is that E2 seems the slightly more aggressive one. I'm always happy when this "attack my sibling" stage has passed.

This morning, May 3, the chicks are approximately 6, 5, and 3 days old. It is about 49°F with no wind. There has been no parent on the nest since I tuned in around 7:30. The chicks are clumping and appear to be shivering. Why would the parents leave them in the relative cold for this long before they can thermoregulate? It looks like there's plenty of prey already hanging around the nest area, so it doesn't seem like they need to be hunting right now.

I would like to share with you something that I learned from my education in livestock farming. I read that young animals born during the cold seasons are stimulated by the cold to develop a better cardiovascular system. Could there be an instinct for this at work here?

This morning Karel was interviewing a group of researchers that band Crows in the Ithaca area. http://new.livestream.com/karelsedlacek/events/2989825 They mentioned that Red-tailed Hawks sometimes dine on Crows and that they had seen it on this nest cam. Like Karel and Bogette, I missed it. But I'm wondering if anyone else remembers when that happened.

Have you heard of the "No-Kill Zone"? This is something that some of our knowledgeable RTH experts have been debating for some time. Without naming names, one says that the parents will not kill prey within a certain distance of the nest. Presumably this would be advantageous so that they don't accidentally kill their own young. (I have read about this phenomenon in Brown & Amadon in the section on Cooper's Hawks.) Other raptor experts disagree, saying it doesn't exist.

Today Big Red killed a starling, one of the parents with young in the pipe, right on the nest. Karel caught it on his livestream this morning at about 9:05. Go to this link and advance to 01:16:36 http://new.livestream.com/karelsedlacek/events/3035134 I hope the Lab publishes what it looked like from cam 2. Here is what cam 1 captured. http://youtu.be/xmI2MULJHqs Here is a picture of the remains on the nest.

dead starling.png - Bild entfernt (keine Rechte)

Starling hops in nest. The E's give it some curious, yet cute, looks until the "raptor" part of little E's brain kicks in. WARNING: If you don't want to see a young RTH catch a baby starling, DON'T WATCH!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc372M0S1Q0

Monday morning Big Red killed one of the starling parents (see post #36 above). Did the other parent get killed, too? How many fledglings have been captured this year so far? (Am I hearing about the same incident multiple times, or have there been multiple incidents?)

This is what has been conjectured about why starlings might choose to nest close to a raptor's nest. Although they are placing themselves and their young in danger, they are also protecting themselves from other predators that steer clear of a raptor nest.