The Hamilton Community Peregrine Project says the countdown to hatching is underway at the city’s downtown Sheraton Hotel.
The dedicated volunteer group says the city’s newest falcon, named McKeever, laid her first eggs on Sunday on the building’s nesting ledge.
“There is only one thing we can think of that would make a peregrine falcon sit out in the rain and snow, rather than find a nice shaded perch,” Falconwatch wrote on its website, “and this afternoon we saw McKeever perform a very particular wiggling motion that peregrines do when settling their feathers over an egg.”
The Falconwatch post adds that “she has chosen the same near corner of the ledge which Lily used. This means we cannot see into the scrape itself, so we won’t be able to count the eggs.”
The process from laying eggs until hatching takes just over a month.
McKeever arrived in the area earlier this year, shortly after January’s death of Lily, the hotel ledge’s previous resident female.
McKeever is named in honour of Kay McKeever, who co-founded the Owl Foundation with her husband Larry in the 1970s.
The Vineland Station sanctuary rescues injured owls before sheltering, nursing and releasing them back into the wild.