Toronto Photography Meetup Group

Details:

What: A pair of peregrine falcons who have laid eggs
When: Open
Time: Mon-Fri, 9am - 5pm
Where: My office at Don Mills/York Mills
Bring: Long lens(es), polarizer for window glare

A pair of Peregrine Falcons have set up a "nest" on a balcony across the street from my office, and have gained some media attention as they've laid eggs:
http://www.globaltoronto.com/video/inde ... NsjWf4WefB

If anyone is interested in coming to see them, please let me know and I'll try to accomodate. I can sign you in as a guest and escort you to the viewing room where the Canadian Peregrine Falcon Society has set up a telescope and other stuff, and you can take photos as you wish. The viewing room offers a pretty good view but you'll need a polarizer for window glare and a pretty long lens. As this is a place of business, for now I will only take one person at a time, one per day max as I do have work to do here.

If you're interested please check the box above so I can judge whether or not it's worth keeping this offer open, and you can PM me to arrange a day/time. Thanks!

200 long enough?

Probably not unless you don't mind cropping. I tried a 100mm on my EP-2, so it's 200mm effective, but it only looked like maybe 1/5 of the width of the frame max. They do have a spotting scope set up there (sorry, I made a mistake in the post, it's not a telescope), so you could digiscope but of course the quality won't be as good.

This is as close as I got at 200mm with a Nikon D50 (300mm equiv):


Here's another article with an action shot. They must have waited quite a while to catch the male with food in his talons:
http://www.thestar.com/news/article/976254--falcons-find-high-flying-harlequin-romance?bn=1

Thanks for the offer, will PM you soon once I free up time during the week. Most likely end of May with my schedule. Will bust out my Tokina 80 - 400 for this, on my 7D it's 640mm that should get me some great close ups.

Someone PMd about whether there was a terrace or if it was possible to open the windows, but none of the windows in our building can open that I know of, and we don't have a terrace. Besides the observation room is on the 9th floor so I think by that high a floor they want to keep people from opening the window and jumping out haha. You could try standing on the ground floor but you would only see up their bird butts However I did see a photographer with some type of long L lens standing on the ground floor taking photos of the male, because he flies around during the day to scope the land and hunt for food..

Someone asked me about the best time of day to come, I didn't know and was going to keep track of lighting levels at that area today. Unfortunately the week's weather forecast doesn't look too good, but it's nice and bright right now (about 1:30pm) where the sun is pointing directly at the nest, and the shadows are to the left side of the pillar (i.e., no shadow on the nest). I hope this helps.

It's been a clear day today, and it seems the best time is around noon or early afternoon, as the other times of the day there are shadows cast from either the surround pillars or the ledge above..

Apparently Canon has come to set up a live webcam. For now it's just accessible by employees but they will broadcast it externally soon. Here's a teaser:

A baby has hatched!

I don't know if anyone is still reading along, but the webcam is active now for external viewing.

http://harlequinblog.com/2011/06/harleq ... grine-cam/

Cool! Thanks.

Thank you

You can see the viewing room here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/CPFFrank#p/search/0/HAlhH_Ky3Ak

Cool stuff. Looks like a busy little room at your office!

If anyone's watching this thread, check out the cam for the next hour or so! They are going to be banding the baby very soon so you will be able to see some poor sob climb up there and risk getting his eyes pecked out by the mom!! lol

Banding ceremony is over, baby is back at home with mom, unfortunately nobody got their eyes pecked out...

And the City TV spot on the banding ceremony:
http://www.citytv.com/toronto/citynews/videos/138388

Thanks for the update!

OK baby Harlequin has shed most of her white feathers and has learned to fly. Here's a bunch taken by someone from the Peregrine Falcon Society (looks like a 7D and 400mm f5.6 L), from what looks like ground floor:

Another place to see these birds is from the parking lot of the David Duncan House. From there, you can see the birds perched on the ledge on the eastern face of the Westin Hotel. I saw the juvenile and an adult (probably the male) there between 2-3pm on Saturday.