3/17, Eggs Imminent? Or Already?

I'm beginning to suspect Isolde is very close to laying an egg, if she hasn't laid the first one already.

Early this evening the nest looked empty, but a bit later I noticed a couple tail feathers poking up on one side and wiggling around. Then all was quiet for the next ten or twelve minutes. Around 6:25, Isolde sat up and started watching the skies to the south and east.

She sat like that for over 15 minutes, and one began to suspect she was feeling the hungries and was wondering where Norman was with her dinner.

About 6:45 Norman whizzed by and Isolde immediately popped out of the nest. Perhaps there was a bit of miscommunication as to where food was supposed to be delivered, as the pair perched on opposite sides of the hospital roof. But quickly enough things got sorted out and both hawks perched on the corner of the roof at 54 Morningside Drive, the same spot where Isolde had her short dinner yesterday.

Over the next five minutes, Isolde chowed down on a rat, while Norman watched.

Then Norman got bored and took off. But Isolde must have been starved, as she spent another ten minutes eating.

A few minutes after 7:00, Isolde finished up and headed back to the nest. Along the way she stopped for a minute to scrape the schmutz off her beak on a corner of the roof at St. Luke's.

That Isolde was lying down in the nest for some time is suggestive of an egg having been laid. But that she was willing to sit up for 15 minutes, and then leave the nest empty for another 15 means she isn't obsessive about incubating it yet. That would hint that she hasn't finished laying her clutch.

Or perhaps I'm just reading too much into her behavior. Nevertheless, it did look like she was going to spend the night in the nest, and that's usually a good sign that egg-laying is imminent.