No chicks this year for South Bend falcon nest. Sad turns in this soap opera.

SOUTH BEND — There won’t be chicks this year in the peregrine falcon nest on top of the County-City Building. The soap opera that began in March has taken some sad turns.

Among them, none of the four eggs that were laid in mid-April proved to be viable.

The female in that nest, Maltese, who has been hatching eggs there since 2017, has been missing for more than two weeks — at least, missing from view of the live camera that you can watch at falcam.southbendin.gov. That doesn’t bode well for her.

About the time she went missing, an unbanded female that nest watchers have called an “intruder” started to visit the nest. Again. In late March, an unbanded female had also visited the nest and fought with Maltese.

As The Tribune reported at that time, the state ornithologist, Allisyn Gillet, had said that it likely was a young falcon, hatched in the wild, who was trying to establish her own territory and nest. Falcons sometimes will fight to the death, she said.

March 2022: Mystery unfolds in South Bend falcon nest: A new beau and a female intruder.

That was on top of the other news in March: Maltese’s mate for four years, Peace, hadn’t returned — experts presume that he may have died — though a banded male from Fort Wayne, Flash, stepped in to take his place.

Nest watchers took relief when the intruder apparently stopped showing up and when Maltese went ahead to lay four eggs in mid-April. Flash proved to be a mindful mate to Maltese. At the time, Indiana Audubon Society Director Brad Bumgardner expected the eggs would hatch in mid-May. Once they did, he planned to return, as usual, to harmlessly band the chicks.

April 2022: Quiet returns to South Bend peregrine falcon soap opera as 4 eggs laid in nest

But, starting May 8, Jean Galloway of Evansville, a dedicated watcher of the nest camera, noticed a change. Maltese wasn’t sitting on and incubating the eggs as much as she usually did during the day. Luckily, Flash would fill in for her. But Galloway also noticed long periods where neither falcon was in the nest.

She wrote to a reporter, ‘”Don’t know if she is ill, intruder in area not seen on cam, but definitely something is up.”

Maltese briefly returned to incubation for a couple of days, but on May 14, Galloway wrote, Maltese no longer showed in the nest. Flash stepped in to incubate the eggs. And an unbanded female intruder appeared. Galloway couldn’t tell for certain if it was the same female as the one seen in March.

Every year, banding has helped to identify and track the progress of the adult falcon parents because they migrate each fall and return in the spring.

By then, it was about time for the eggs to hatch, because incubation typically takes 28 to 32 days, Bumgardner said. Time lingered. Flash regularly sat on the eggs but also was gone for hours at a time.

Things looked promising this past Friday, May 27, when, in the somewhat murky video, it looked like there were small holes in two of the eggs. This can be a sign that a chick is starting to break out of its shell. But it may have been false hope, Bumgardner said, with all of the lapses in incubation and how late it had gone past the usual incubation time. It could be, too, he said, that one of the adults pecked the holes.

One of the adults kicked an egg to the side and, using its beak, picked up the two eggs with holes and placed them on the ledge, where they went out of sight. This is often a sign that the eggs are no longer viable. Over the weekend, Galloway observed the female flying out of the nest with three of the eggs.

By Monday, only one egg remained. Galloway said the female appeared to peck a hole and started to eat the contents. Flash had stopped incubating the egg, which remained there on Wednesday.

2022 may not be a happy story for South Bend, but Bumgardner noted, “It’s the life cycle for falcons.”

It wasn’t the only source of falcon nest drama in Indiana this spring.

In Gary, the female falcon was found dead near the nest at the Carmeuse lime and stone plant. Another female took her place, Bumgardner said, not knowing if there’d been a fight. He physically checks the nest three to four times a year. It doesn’t have a camera.

And at a nest at a steel mill in East Chicago, he said, adult falcons kicked a couple of eggs to the side. That remains a mystery, too.

But there has been promising news, too.

In Elkhart, it appears that two falcon chicks may have recently fledged — or successfully grown and left — from a former osprey nest that two adults had taken over atop a cellphone tower next to the city’s water tower in Hadley Park. As far as anyone knows, Bumgardner said, that’s the first time in Indiana that falcons have used an osprey nest.

There isn’t a live camera in any of those nests, but there is one in the nest on top of the Indiana Michigan Power building in Fort Wayne, where two of four eggs hatched in late April.

Bumgardner plans to return to the South Bend nest soon to clean it up, including the murky camera lens, and remove any eggs. And if he can catch the female “intruder,” he’ll try to band her, too. Then, after humans have had time to accept reality, he suggested, it might be time to come up with a name for the female.

Email South Bend Tribune reporter Joseph Dits at jdits@sbtinfo.com. Follow him on Facebook at SBTOutdoorAdventures.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: South Bend peregrine falcon nest fails to have chicks. Maltese gone.