We must help the chicks!
What is happening in the Ma & Pa nest now is something which has nothing to with natural selection: the chicks hatched heatlhy and the parents were caring very well about them.
Then, Ma disappeared and Pa was raising the brood alone: Natural Selection has formed the instinct of this male in order to cope with a sudden disappearance of its mate, and he was doing quite well its job.
Then, another unexpected event: the female subtracting the food (but respecting the chicks), and Pa still trying to feed them. But this seems not to be enough and the chicks are just at the limit of their survival..
I am asking you (the responsible(s) of this nest) to undertake some actions to revert this situation: for example just drop in the nest a couple of dead pigeons/day (one for the female and another tied on its legs so that the female cannot remove it, for the male to feed the chicks) or giving food to the chicks in the nest (an operation will will take some 20 min withouth disturbing much the male but providing to the chick enough energy for further begging the male). This should be done just for one more week, because it is now the critical period: then, the chicks will be old enough to eat the preys alone and perhaps to compete with the female for the food.
To help the three chicks now, in my view, does not mean at all to interfere with Natural Selection!!
By the way an artificial nest is already a human interference with our environment and watching on-line the show of the slow death of the chicks makes me and many other visitors quite frustrated and unhappy.
Also, by being part of this show we are also part of this “natural selection” and in case of peregrines, we as humans we havy many responsibilities:
-first: we make them almost disappearing with DDT and other noxious productus;
-second: we struggled for helping the population all around the world to recover, sometimes by introducing (thousands of ) captive-raised birds and often (in the States) by introducing birds from other geographic areas;
-third: we provide them, in many cases good nesting opportunities which they suddenly accepted thus confirming that habitat, including urbanised areas, is suitable for them to breed and reproduce and that perhaps only nesting sites were a limiting factor;
-fourth: we placed webcams and gave the opportunity to thousands of people to watch the secret life of these birds on their nest from their home pc.
This latter in my view is the best help we gave to these birds because people can appreciate the daily effort of these birds to protect and raise with care their chicks. And people loves them and suffer for accidents due to Natural Selection (unhatched eggs, chicks dying because of intra-nest competition or disease), but do not like to suffer for the omission of some simple actions which can revert a situation created by a series of unexpected events...
Giacomo Dell’Omo
President, Ornis Italica
www.birdcam.it