Yesterday morning Dorothy made news in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette with an article about her miracle egg, laid at age 16 (click here to read).

Then yesterday afternoon at 3:33pm she performed another miracle and laid a second egg.

A year ago on this date she was recovering from being egg bound on egg#2 so she’s already doing better this year than last. Definitely a healthy sign.

Last evening I saw Dorothy shake open her brood patch and warm the eggs but …

… this was not the start of incubation.  It was only a temporary warming.  As you can see from this overnight footage she isn’t incubating yet.

Peregrines begin incubation after the female lays her next-to-last egg.  Technically the eggs hatch in 32 days but it’s hard to tell when incubation begins.  (The textbooks used to say 33-35 days. )

Delayed incubation results in synchronous hatching.  All the peregrine eggs hatch on the same day (except for the one laid after incubation began) and all the chicks are the same age.  Peregrine nestlings do not compete with each other for food like bald eaglets do.  There is no danger of siblicide.

The fact that she isn’t incubating means Dorothy thinks there’s another egg in her but we don’t know how many.  We have no hatch date estimate yet.

(photos from the National Aviary falconcam at the University of Pittsburgh)