And we'll join us again in the fall. This is our last talk for this series. In September, we will have a talk from Roberta Hill on the invasive species affecting our lake waters. In October, Doug Hitchcock from Maine Audubon is going to address ethical issues around wildlife from many different angles, and I think we'll be fascinating. And in November, Patty Cormier is going to return, and we'll give a discussion on the particular characteristics of trees, why our leaves lobed, why as bark the way it is, etc. So we're hoping you can all join us for that. We hope to be live, but we will let you know. Tonight, we are continuing our series of bird success stories with Patrick Kark, who will discuss peregrines on Mount dessert and is also going to discuss some of the hawk watches and I think has maybe a few other things. He is an ornithogological ranger on the wonderful Mount Desert Island. Nick is doing our monitoring here and he has asked me to request that you save your questions till the end. Use the Q&A please and not the chat. And to remind everybody also, if you're interested, this is being recorded and will be available. So without any further taking time from Patrick, I will turn it over to Patrick Kark. Thank you for joining us Patrick. Thank you and thanks for the invite from Western Maine Audubon to come out and speak to everyone today. I'm very excited to talk about it. This raptor conservation in and around Acadia National Park is probably one of my favorite things to discuss. So I'm really excited to be able to give that presentation to everyone today. Before we get off, just before we begin, I just want to answer, we did get a question from Dan beforehand so I can just address that before we get into the presentation that you had two chicks at Jordan Cliffs and three at Valley Cove. Are the correct numbers for peregrine falcon fudge links from the year 2020. We'll get into the discussion there. One of our main sites, the precipice did fail. We don't 100% know for sure, but my best guess is we did get hit by some significant weather with a cold snap around the end of April last year, which is a pretty critical time for peregrine falcon fledgling success and the fact that if they had hatched out of those eggs, and then had a period of a couple of days of heavy rains and then close to freezing temperatures, that is probably what ended up causing them to fail. And although we saw a little bit of interesting behavior to see if they were going to remest it did not seem that they ever successfully remest it. And so we did have a failure at the precipice last year. But with that as we get into the presentation. First off, I just want to really talk or introduce you all to myself a little bit and why I'm so passionate about this topic. So of course my name is Patrick, and I hail from Colorado. And peregrines are the reason I'm out here in Maine today. Eight years ago, just after I graduated Colorado State University with a degree in zoology. I was lucky enough to come out to Acadia National Park and be the raptor intern. That is probably going to be the coolest job title I'll ever have in my life and it's only downhill from there. Being a raptor intern was amazing. It was an opportunity for me to begin science communication. I have a wonderful opportunity of viewing peregrine falcons in their natural habitat and of course sharing their success story. All across the world but specifically here in Acadia National Park to hundreds of visitors a day. I was lucky enough that that internship didn't turn into an ornithology ranger position for me. And I have been an ornithology ranger at Acadia for seven more years and it has been an amazing experience and I love that I can keep continuing to do that year in and year out. But of course today we are going to begin off by talking about the peregrine falcon conservation story here on Mount Desert Island. And really to understand that conservation story we'll just do a brief coverage of what caused the decline of peregrine falcons and other raptor species throughout North America. And that has everything to do with a chemical called DDT. DDT was a chemical that was invented just after or during World War II and it was found out to be an incredible insecticide and it was long lasting. It stayed on the crops in the fields and therefore protected the crops for much longer than current pesticides at the time could. However, that ability to be long lasting as we now know did end up contributing to the decline of raptor species. So if DDT laid on the environment it would degrade into another form of the chemical called DDT and that chemical started causing issues through a process called bio accumulation. We started to see DDT concentrations within birds skyrocket to the point where in peregrine falcons in particular the DDT concentrations became so high. It actually started to inhibit their ability to create calcium and that of course was very important for their ability to produce healthy eggs. In the bottom right picture here we do have two peregrine falcon eggs that because of that limit of calcium production, you would be able to pick up these eggs and just kind of pinch them closed with your fingers. This of course didn't give them great protection and we started to see no population recruitment for peregrine falcons and DDT was heavily sprayed throughout North America in the 1950s. But again that long lasting effect stayed in the populations and we started to see a decline in peregrine falcon numbers through the 50s 60s and into the 70s.  If you had a peregrine falcon pair that lived near you during this time, you probably saw it in 1953 you saw it in 54 55 so on and so forth until eventually those birds would have died of, excuse me of old age. But because of these problem in the eggshells, no young falcons were being produced to replace those adults once they died off, and therefore very suddenly we saw a decline in the numbers. Eventually, a wonderful woman named Rachel Carson wrote a book called Silent Spring, and it was really one of the first documents to explore the idea of chemicals and the impact that we have on our environment and how that can cascade through a system. We had, you know, it was starting to be in scientific documents, but what, at least in my opinion why I deem Silent Spring so highly in regard to helping peregrine falcon conservation is this was one of the first times we saw science communication. Rachel Carson took this idea that had been found out in the scientific community, but presented it in a way that was available to the public. And through that public opinion was able to shift on DDT was banned for use in 1972 in the United States. Excuse me, and as continue to see little to no use in North America since that time. But at that point, the damage was done. A 1970 survey done throughout North America but highly focused on high density areas of peregrine falcons were only able to find minimal pairs in what we would still consider excellent peregrine falcon range. And unfortunately, that decline really hit a subspecies of peregrine falcon called falco peregrinus anatom to the point where that subspecies which is the eastern subspecies of peregrine falcon also was referenced as the duck footed falcon. It was extirpated from the wild. There were still some anatoms in captivity owned by falconers, but at least when it came to wild populations of the birds they could no longer be found. But through Silent Spring and Rachel Carson, and roughly a just strong push towards conservation efforts in the late 60s and early 70s. So the peregrine falcons were deemed an important species to bring back. We of course had the endangered species act, beginning here in the country as well. And in 1972 reintroduction began in the Chesapeake Bay area for peregrine falcons. Sorry about that. When it comes to reintroduction of peregrine falcons and having so such limited population throughout the country, we, and by we I mean the conservation agencies, National Park Service State agencies nonprofit and a lot of private falconers worked together to create a hacking program. And hacking is a term for raising peregrine falcon fledglings in captivity. In this case they grabbed peregrine falcons from around the world, including anatom subspecies that were falconer birds. And they started interbreeding all of the subspecies to kind of create a general falcon that would be best suited to be released in a variety of different locations. But with no adult birds to raise these chicks, humans started doing it themselves. Well, birds do have a critical time in their development where they imprint on usually the adult birds that are caring for them. And this imprinting is how birds get roughly what we call their self identity, how they decide what bird am I, what bird should I be hanging out with. To help keep peregrine falcon fledglings from imprinting on humans, we of course use really creepy peregrine falcon puppets to feed those little fledgings in those captivity. Until they reached roughly around three to four weeks of age, where they then be brought to hacking sects, and they started going on throughout a variety of areas of the country. In England and Maine and specifically we didn't begin hacking until 1984. And the reason why was, there was roughly little to no information on where should we even bring peregrine falcons back to. And so into 1983, the Resource Management Specialist Carol Shell here at Acadia National Park, and a College of Atlantic Professor William Drury work together to evaluate historic and potential area locations on the islands. Because of this work they did Acadia National Park was selected to begin a hacking program in 1984. The location they chose to hack in Acadia National Park was Jordan Cliffs, which we can see right in the center of the island there. And the reason they chose that cliff was first it was suitable habitat for peregrine falcons. But it also lied almost right in the center of two historic area locations here on the island, which are the precipice and valley cove in some sound. The peregrine Acadia National Park occurred in 1984, 85 and 86. This picture here is from the top of the Jordan cliff hacking site where they were beginning to release these peregrine falcon fledglings. And in those three years, the park released 23 peregrine falcon fledglings and we had 22 reach adulthood. Unfortunately, during that first year one of the fledglings did go missing. The park does not have does not really know what exactly happened. The best guess is that it fell out of the nest or the nest box area and therefore was just never found. But pretty successful to see 22 23 or 22 of 23 fledglings, at least fly away from the park that was pretty successful. And the reason why the park stopped in 1987 is because a sub adult Falcon was seen around Jordan clips. And that Falcon is a pretty big character in this story. Back then we still named our Falcons, and it just so happened that this Falcon was named Ganesh, and he was a male from the 1986 fledglings. And why we had to stop hacking is because Falcons can be very territorial towards each other, and sub adult Falcons are well known for attacking fledglings as they're learning to fly and so. Although Guinness showed up about three days before the fledglings were to arrive, they canceled the program and those fledglings were moved off to be hacked in other parts of the state. So our story with Guinness moves away from Jordan clips and in 1988 Guinness is spotted again at the cliffs of the precipice and those are the cliffs on the eastern side of Champlain Mountain on the island. And that's about it. He was seen that summer. He did attract a sub adult female to the cliff site. However, due to her not being old enough yet to be a mate. He hangs around for a couple weeks or so and then disappears. Well, in 1989 Guinness shows up again, and this time he attracts an adult female to the cliffs of the precipice, but no nesting occurs in 1990. Ganesh returns again is able to attract an adult female to the nesting location. We do not know if this was the same female from the previous year. And they do nest, however, due to a lake April storm, the nest does fail. But in 1991, Ganesh and another female Falcon, again, we don't know if it's the same one. They successfully raised the first three wild peregrine Falcon chicks in Acadia National Park since 1956. And that was a huge, huge success. I like just throwing this picture out this picture is from the cliffs of the precipice, and it has taken about six feet above the current nesting site that our peregrine Falcons are occupied. But I just see that and they have an amazing view from that nest site. Well, the precipice has been extremely successful since 1991. Ganesh actually was the male Falcon at that nest all the way up until 1998. And therefore, he was responsible and the different females throughout the time for getting a great start to the populations of peregrine Falcons in and around Maine. To this date, at least last year, 2020, the precipice itself as a nest site has produced 78 successful floods links. But what's even, what's another great thing about the peregrine Falcon recovery project here in Acadia National Park is that ever since 1991, the park has also been doing an interpretation program. And since 1998, which is the oldest stats I could find the peregrine Falcon watch program has been able to talk to over 390,000 visitors about peregrine Falcon conservation. And about the hard work that many nonprofits and government agencies did to bring these birds back to their historic ranges. The precipice is not the only place that peregrine Falcons nest here in Acadia National Park. They also nest now on the Jordan cliffs, the original hack site above Jordan pond, which is the top right picture. They also nest in some sound again one of those historic locations, which we can see in the bottom left over some sound. Every so often they do nest on Canada cliffs or echo cliffs, which is the bottom right hand picture next to Echo Lake. There's actually only ever been one year 2004 where we had a successful peregrine Falcon nesting site at some sound and echo cliffs. The best guess is they're just too close to host two pairs of peregrine Falcons most of the time. As a as a peregrine flies, they're roughly only about a mile apart and therefore too much competition and they probably keep driving themselves out. And most years what we do see in the general trend is that if a peregrine Falcon nest fails their first nesting on some sound, we then do see them retreat to the echo cliffs. And through having all of these nesting sites here in the park. As of 2020 160 peregrine Falcon fledglings have flown from Acadia, which is a huge number huge success story, and is one of pretty much the legacy of these. One of the things that we do see in the program is that bird peregrine Falcons continue to do so well here in this area, continue to do so well in the park and are still thriving in most places that they can be found here in the state of Maine. And when we do have the opportunity, we do like to go up into the nest sites to see possibly what our birds have been feeding on. And what's really fun about the Mount Desert Island peregrine Falcons is that they often do have seabird in their diet or shorebird. The Valley Cove pairs, historically speaking are eating goals a lot. And so we, including herring goals which actually are much larger than a peregrine Falcon in weight. The peregrine Falcons are resourceful. They're able to take down herring goals, but a entire body of a herring goal would be too much. So what we see is peregrine Falcons will actually tear off the wings, tear off the head, legs, and they'll just fly back with the chest back to the nest site or their cash sites. That's primarily because peregrine Falcons are pretty successful hunters. They really only have to spend time eating the high quality meat and of course in birds that is the breast of these herring goals. The precipice pair has often been known to bring back black kilomots, which is really interesting to see the black kilomots red feet hanging underneath the peregrines as they fly back to the cliffs. And then the Jordan Cliff pair seems to often prefer woodpeckers and they often we can find remains of woodpeckers, Downie, Harry. I don't think we've ever found Piliated, but also Northern flickers remains have been found in their nests. Another really fun fact about our Falcons here at the park is that our precipice pair is often known for feeding on those seabirds on Egg Rock Island, which is roughly two miles away from their nest site. And even more impressive is that Petit Manon Island, which is 10 miles east of their nest site. They have been documented sitting on the lighthouse, ready to pick off a variety of different shore birds and that are nesting out there on that island. This is a beautiful picture of one of our adult birds from 2017 at the precipice. What I've really enjoyed about our and following this peregrine falcons here at the Cape, the park, so closely is, is seeing where some of our birds have gone. And these are some of the banding details that actually have been recovered for our birds. And probably the most important or one of the most impressive ones was right there at the top. In 1994, we had a female that was raised on the precipice cliffs. And she was one of the first Falcons to nest in the city of Boston in 96 and 97 on the Christian Science Church building. But she lived a long life she was found dead in 2011, which made her 17 years old. And what we say is kind of the average lifespan for an adult peregrine falcon is 14 to 15 years. So she was definitely one of the older ones out there. And that is truly, truly was a remarkable bird. We also saw a lot of our birds come back to the island, but also spread out into our local states.  Another one that's striking to me and really helps show why peregrine falcons are named peregrine. That's actually Latin for wanderer. In 1997, one of our males fledged in the summer and then decided to fly all the way to Cuba. It seemed to spend the new year in Cuba and that is where he was found. And then probably the most recent kind of success story is that in 2018, one of the females from Acadia National Park was found nesting in Lewiston, Maine. Which was really exciting for us here to follow that story and I myself happened to go down there at one time to go check in on her one more time. And it was really neat to see that bird successfully nesting out there in Lewiston. But the reason we are able to have this data about what birds is because we've also been engaging in a long term banding effort here at the park. Since 1991, we unfortunately haven't been able to do it every year but when we get the opportunity, and we have the right weather and the right timing, we do our best to band all of our peregrine falcon fledgling chicks here in the park. And that's an important thing to note. And why it's so kind of difficult is we have about a three day window when we can ban peregrine falcon fledglings. And that's when they're 21 to 24 days old. If we are to go up there too early, their legs aren't big enough yet for the jewelry to go on their legs. But if they're older than that, you know, 25, 26, 27. What happens is, that's when their instincts kind of changes of what they need to do if danger presents itself. You know, from 24, from when they hatched 24 days old, when a threat is introduced, they just sit there. They hope that the parents are around to come deal with whatever is harassing these birds. But around that 26, 27 day mark, they start to become a little more mobile. And at that point, when a danger is presented, there is a higher likelihood that they might jump, causing them to fall out of their nest and possibly die and or become lost. The adults aren't able to continue feeding it. So we always do our best to make sure we're in that 21 to 24 day range when we go up there with the climbers to grab the birds. These birds have a very exciting couple hours in their lives in store when we do show up. They get picked up from their nest sites, which as we can see here in the left picture can be some ledges that are just a couple of feet long.  They get sent up in these bags, all the way up to the tops of the cliffs where we have a staff up there ready to take measurements. We do a site check on the birds health to see if they have many, you know, mites or lice or any kind of visible injury that we can see. And then they get their jewelry put on. And here at the park we do put two bands on these birds when we bands on this bird's foot on the left foot hour right. You'll see the standard federal bands. This is roughly just a serial code in which is identifies the bird, and these often get reported usually only when a bird's found dead. And what we also put on it on the right leg is a state band. For the core for Maine, that is a black over green band. So the color combination can tell you what state. And then there's nice big white letter and numbers that we hope sometimes when perched the spotting scopes are really nice cameras are able to pick out those letters and number combos and be able to report those so without having to find a dead bird we can still get information on where our falcons are hanging out. But banding is not the only kind of monitoring that we continue to do for peregrine falcons. And in that case for all raptor species because most raptor species also showed a decline during this time of DDE spraying throughout North America. And that other way we monitor raptor populations is through hawk watches. And that's here at the part that is our Cadillac Mountain Hawk watch. Well hawk watches began pretty early on hawk mountain. In 1934, I believe, ran the first hawk watch and hawk mountains very famous for conservationists going there and starting to work on changing a aspect or changing a hunting practice that was going on on that mountain range where they would shoot raptors in the fall and they were able to successfully petition out this hunting act throughout that range and actually change it into, you know, the hawk mountain sanctuary where they now count migrating raptors. And so there were, there were hawk watches starting to pick up in different parts throughout North America. And you can tell about 1974 where the hawk migration associate of North America was found, founded, and this was an organization that started to take all these individual hawk watches, and started to bring a place where all their data would be integrated and brought together. So therefore, all this data that was coming in from these sites could be seen as one massive look at the raptor population here in North America. Well here at Cadillac Mountain, we have the opportunity to view these 12 species. Starting from left to right, top to bottom, we have turkey vultures, bald eagles, osprey, northern Harriers, Cooper's Hawks, Sharpshin Hawks, American kestrels, Merlins, Broadwing Hawk, Redtail Hawks, Northern Goss Hawks, and Peregrine Falcons. We will definitely see those 12 species every year. We also have the opportunity on that to catch a little more rare species coming through, golden eagles every so often. Pretty exciting time was in 2016, we had a Swainson Hawk show up at the Cadillac Hawks, which was a very exciting day. But we've been counting these birds up there at the Cadillac Hawk Watch since 1995. And so we'll be going into our 27th year of counting here this year. We have been an active Hawk Watch site throughout that time frame. And what makes us unique is because of a joint partnership between the park and Scoutic Institute. We actually have a site that has some of the highest coverage that isn't one of the main sites like Hawk Mountain, or some of the ones run by Hawk Watch International. And we sit there on that mountain and we count migrating raptors. These are the top three raptors that we'll see on top that mountain, Sharpshin Hawks, and American Kestrels will definitely be usually number one and number two. However, Broadwing Hawks are pretty, their, your chance of seeing high numbers of them are very dependent on the weather. So we often average probably somewhere from 300 to 600 each year. But in certain years, when the winds are right, the weather's been favorable for us, maybe not other Hawk Watch sites. Those are days where we'll see thousands of Broadwings come through, which is pretty common for Hawk Watches farther south. But because we're so far north, we just don't have the opportunity to see as many birds coming by. So those can be some pretty special days when we get those big Broadwing Kettles come through. But one of my favorite things to look at when it comes to our Hawk Watch data is we can also see the recovery of these species that, you know, conservation agencies have been working so hard to bring back to their historic ranges. So the peregrine falcon one, we can see we do average almost double, if not more than what we initially started seeing in 1995, and the first couple years, which is a good sign. Definitely isn't as dramatic because peregrine falcons do have much more limited nesting habitat throughout the, throughout the countryside than bald eagles do. But the bald eagle numbers are striking. Since 1995, you'd see that we saw zero for the first couple years and very small numbers for the next decade. But eventually as bald eagle numbers started to recover to so did their flights past Cadillac Mountain, and we now see very healthy numbers of bald eagles come through the Cadillac Hawk Watch every fall. And what's really special about the Cadillac Hawk Watch in my opinion is truly the experience. It's a wonderful group of people that hang up there. The volunteers that we have here at the Cadillac Hawk Watch are top notch and amazing and create such a wonderful environment for us Rangers who count out there as well as other volunteers from Scoot against to, and more than hundreds of visitors that also come by the Cadillac Hawk Watch each year. And often, when you go to other Hawk Watches, you're looking up because that's where birds are passing by. But because of Cadillac Mountain being so unique is the tallest mountain on the eastern seaboard. We look up or very rarely do we look up.  When I first came here to Acadia in 2014, I had to find a new raptor book because I'd been so used from identifying them from the underside that identifying a Cooper's and a Sharpshoe Hawk would be very different when you only ever saw the top of it. And that goes for a lot of these raptor species. And so it was a really, really unique experience to see these birds in a different way than we usually do. And we get some wonderful opportunities to get some beautiful looks at these birds coming by, but probably my favorite thing about our Hawk Watch because we're positioned so uniquely along the coast. We get all these birds often flying within 50 feet of us on top of this mountain ridge. All 12 of those species from Northern gosh Hawks to American kestrels that we see here. I've all passed within my head by 50 feet, and it is a truly, truly amazing thing to see those birds so close on their migrations that might be taking them all the way down to South America. And that is just truly, truly remarkable. And so, as we kind of finish up this presentation today on the peregrine falcons here at Acadia and the Hawk Watch. For everyone out there who is listening today I invite you to come join us on the Cadillac Hawk Watch in the fall or come by and hang out with us at the precipice in June and July, and really have a beautiful place to come in, watch these birds. Learn about them, learn how to ID them, hang out with some amazing people that share the same passion as we all do and our love for birds. And it truly I would love to see all of you come by Cadillac Hawk Watch this fall. Feel free. If any of you'd like to take down my email address here. If you have any questions about birding in Acadia National Park or Acadia National Park in general, I am always ears to help answer those questions. And with that, I'd like to thank you all for joining me today to learn about Acadia's peregrine falcons story as well as our Hawk Watch. Thank you. Makes me want to get outside. Hello, Cal. That was really cool. Thank you, Patrick. We have a few questions coming in and folks if you're watching and you want to have questions for Patrick, please put them in the Q&A box. We'll start here. Which of the two migrations I think spring or fall is question which of the two migration sees the largest number of raptors. So for us specifically here at Acadia, we're just a fall Hawk Watch. We don't do a spring watch from there because at that point, the coast that part of the coastline isn't as much as a funnel, it's more raptor species filtering out from the Appalachian and the coast farther south. And so therefore we just don't see the same numbers to count there. We're definitely a fall Hawk Watch. So coming in from the Canadian Maritimes and Eastern Canada, that's only have the best time to see the most amount of raptors. I do believe Bradbury Mountain though down south in Maine is a spring Hawk Watch. And so they are, they, that's another great place to see migrating raptors in the spring. And they're going right now folks are down in the, that's in Poundall, I believe. Bradbury Mountain, and a sort of follow up question for that from Mary Jane is what are the dates of the Acadia Hawk Watch, the Cadillac Mountain. So we always do our Hawk Watch from the last training usually going on the second to last week of August by, by the last week of August, all the way through the end of October is our our Cadillac Mountain Hawk Watch. You will find some intrepid volunteers out there the first couple days of November, if the weather's okay, but it is a that's our main timeframe. I would also on top of that say our peak kind of our peak day every year averages around September 14. So if you're really trying to eye good time to come to the park to see a good amount of raptors that week around September 14 is a great time. When do your snowy owls show up up there. The snowy owls tend to show up the earliest I've ever seen one is the last week of November. Okay. All right, so it's a little overlap there. Unfortunately, they tend to show up right when we close the road to the top of the mountain. They're smart that way. A little more strenuous to go see them. Mary Jane asks about bald eagle migration and where they go. She said she thought they were year round residents. Well, for us along the coastline, they are. Many of our bald eagles are year round residents and that's because our bald eagles habitually feed from the ocean or they feed from water that is not freezing throughout the winter. But there's many bald eagles that are breeding on freshwater lakes and ponds and streams and rivers throughout the northern parts of Maine, Canada, throughout the entire country roughly. And those birds, we do see migrations of their numbers down south to freshwater, which they're used to feeding on to the point where they're unfrozen. That makes sense. Another migration question is which non raptor species are seen in greatest numbers during the hot watches. That's a great question. We do. We do do our best to pay attention to everything coming by. Including butterflies and migrating butterflies and dragonflies. We do our best to count them to very cool. I mean, we don't see too many songbirds or many of the other bird species because they tend to migrate at night, while raptors are primarily are ones that come through the day. But we definitely do see some large flights of swallows and night hawks sometimes come through during the day, which is really fun to see. One thing that really caught me off guard one time is every so often we have will it's show on top up on Cadillac Mountain. And I was like, this is interesting, you know, will it shore bird, what are you doing here, but actually young ones in the fall and they're almost always immature will it's will eat the berries. So they show up and they start eating a lot of the mountain crowberry that's still left over in the fall on tops of our summits, as they're on their southernly migrations. And so it's pretty fun to see. Very cool. Still got a bunch of questions out here one from Diane. She asked about you mentioned that sometimes the babies will fall and the parents could still. Yeah, what happens when a fledgling falls out of the nest appearance. Try to keep keep things going or what happens. Yeah. Um, so it actually happened here in the park in a predates my time but from Rangers I've overlapped with in 2013 we actually had a peregrine falcon fledgling at age. And it happened around 1617 days fell out of its net so prior to it being ready to be a fledging or even start jumping around, but it happened to fall only about 12 feet, and it landed on another ledge and although it was outside the nest site the adults were. I mean these adults have such a strong tie to the nest site. So like if a chick falls out. That's kind of usually could spell the end if it's far enough. But this one just happened to be long enough maybe it maybe a bagged loud enough, but it was able to keep the adult attention that although it still had a couple siblings in the nest site, they still kept feeding it until it was able to jump its way become mobile enough that it jumped its way back into the grape site on the cliff. That's fascinating. Great. I have a question here from Diane about what falcons eat to the eat squirrels and other mammals. Actually, if I could follow up to I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how they, how they hunt. Yeah, definitely. So, I'd roughly say peregrine falcons have about a 95% diet of birds. They are designed to eat birds. I won't say 100% is because when they're young and they're learning how to fly we do see them try and catch dragonflies and butterflies on the wing. And then also in populations where there's large bat emergencies at night we do see peregrine falcons eat bats as well. But primarily peregrine falcons eat other birds. They are from small songbirds, you know, from song sparrows and gold finches all the way, which are just a little bit of a snack to as large as herringgoals kind of on a basis. I've personally witnessed a peregrine falcon strike a great blue herring. And actually, I also think there's a, I think there's like a YouTube video out there of someone seeing a falcon rebird doing the same thing as well. And I never knew if this was a faltering bird or not, but it did strike a great blue herring. So they definitely focus in on birds, primarily in regards to how they hunt birds. I mean, we can see that in their speed, right. So peregrine falcons are the, as far as we know the fastest animals on the planet, where they can often dive over 150 200 miles per hour. The fastest peregrine falcon ever clocked was 270 miles per hour. That was some crazy circumstances they had taken it up in a plane and had a chase after a pigeon, but pretty remarkable and put a little accelerometer backpack on it. It's still remarkable to see a creature reach those speeds that's that that's faster than human freefall. So if you jump a skydiver jumping out of the plane that peregrine falcon would have beat them to the ground by 10s of seconds.  And then eventually they'll lock on. They'll go into what we call a stoop, where they will fold their wings they dive they reach these incredible speeds. And what's really cool about raptor vision, and in particular peregrine falcons is they have binocular vision, or excuse me, monocular vision, not binocular vision. But what it roughly means is they actually have two focal points in their eyes, one for long distance and one for short distance. We now know this because of slow motion cameras, what as a peregrine falcons closing in on a bird, they'll actually tilt their head to go from their long distance vision to their short distance vision that allows them to kind of strike with better accuracy. So how they strike also changed, you know, we kind of used to think that they used to punch the prey out of the area, or punch the prey on the back of the neck, trying to break the back or the neck to just kill the birds instantly from the collision. So slow motion cameras again, we now know that that also just doesn't make sense right if you punch something was at high speeds is a good chance of breaking your digits.  And then usually follow it to the ground once it's been killed. And in some cases if it's still wounded, they will, they have a little notch in their beak that they'll use to sever the spinal cord of the bird once it's on the ground, and then either proceed to eat it there or they will carry it off. What we're talking about Falcons is they will cash food on the cliff face as well, which is pretty unique for a rabbit. Thank you. From Dan ring, can you give us an idea of how the nesting is going this year. Yeah. I don't have any numbers yet on fledglings or not, we tend to be pretty non invasive all of our monitoring is done from a long distance through spotting scope. We have to wait till the, you know the snowy little fur balls work their way to the edges of the cliff and we're able to count them all at the same time. But we do have active nest sites at the precipice at Jordan cliffs and Valley Cove once again this year. Cool. Congrats. When banding the chicks do you ever have to worry about the parents being protective and trying to defend the chicks away from the banders that definitely they are. It's definitely laughed. It's a paragraph Falcon screeching is definitely going on constantly as it's as the banding opportunities are going on. However, they're smart. I mean, they're not. They realize that striking a hundred and 80 pound person isn't often going to necessarily end up so the well so they often do a lot of bluff diving. So you really don't have to worry too much about them striking but they will. And so of course the climbers are wearing helmets because they do know that the back of the head is where they want to hit because that's what they hit when they're having at birds as well. And so one of the best ways to keep Falcons from diving is by having someone looking at them and or painting an eye on the back of your climbing helmet because they do recognize that I you know this shape of an eye means that things looking at me and therefore has a chance to retaliate. Another thing you'll see them some climbers do is they'll put a little flower or they'll take something on top of their helmet that kind of gives the bird something else to strike that won't harm the climber but also harm the bird if it hits it. Very cool. Diane asked again about hunting when placed in the nest at four weeks.  So this may be talking about the Hacks birds or. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we took a gamble. I mean when we did these conservation, there was no way for us to teach these birds how to hunt. They're not going over the edge, but that's roughly it we could you know we're not going out there skydiving with the bird next to us catching something out there it's not going to be possible so we, we really hope that there was enough instinct in these birds to learn how to hunt on their own, and luckily, they were. But on the flip side, today we do still see adults teach the young. On the edge, which is about, or once we consider them fledglings, which is roughly four to five weeks after they're hatched. They go through a period of learning how to fly and then once they're flying, you see the adults teach them things. Again at the press, you know the precipice beautiful place to see it all happen and occur in real time. You'll often sometimes see the adults will come back and they'll lead the birds on the young on chases to catch the, to catch the food. And then as they get better at that you'll see them drop it, and they'll make the young catch the food out of the air as kind of a way to teach them how to hunt successfully. Fascinating. What cool birds. Two questions left I think we're going to end right on time here. Donna asks how climate change is affecting these raptors, she says the raptors, which could be peregrines or larger than that. Well luckily, luckily for these raptors in all honesty climate change is probably helping them in a lot of regards, especially in the change of bald eagles. As we see bald eagle numbers are still climbing throughout many locations, and that has a lot to do with, and what we'll see throughout a lot of bird species and what is detrimental to some is that generalists tend to thrive better in adverse conditions as things are changing rapidly. And bald eagle is a definition of generalist. They, you know, historically we'd say can fish and climate change does help with the fact that water doesn't freeze as consistently now so you'll, they won't have to go on long migrations as longer migrations as far so that's definitely going to help them have higher survivabilities. They also are great. We actually have a big issue with our bald eagles here feeding on loom chicks. In 2015 we actually lost every loom chick on the island of bald eagle predation. They've been doing a little better recently, but it's definitely an issue. So bald eagles are roughly doing pretty well so far. In terms of peregrine falcons. Again, they eat birds but they can eat a variety of birds. So they're not like tied to a specific one that if it disappeared, we might see the peregrines drop off because of that kind of like the link snowshoe here cycle ecological cycle. But the big issue we have, if we, if we remember my kind of precipice nesting success story there, we have seen three more failures in the last, in the last 10 years than we, that's three times as much as we saw in the first 20 years, roughly. And that primarily, at least in my opinion is due to more, not as predictive weather more frequent kind of freak storms later into the spring, which is going to be the most impactful to the success of the falcons nesting, because they don't have a nest and specifically bald eagles. They have nice big stickness water drains really nice from a stickness. And that's on cliff faces on dirt on gravel. And so if you get puddles of water there, and it's cold out the puddles are just going to sit there. And if that's sitting on the eggs or the new born. That's where you see a lot of failures. Interesting. So, I'll do two additional I mean to one quick one and sort of related question your bald eagle question. Are there any predators that go after peregrines or their babies. Certainly the babies of course are, we would say many things can eat a peregrine falcon baby snakes are sometimes an issue of getting up into the nest sites. But truly for peregrine falcons we kind of look at adult on adult interactions, great horned owls are the only thing that I would say are a predator of peregrines. And that is because peregrines king of the skies during the day. They see just like us at night, and great horned owls are able to pick them off if they don't, you know, choose good roosting spots are aware enough during the night. Just another piece of meat at night. That's right. All right, and just one final one from Dan ring asked will the peregrine falcon watch be held at the precipice parking lot again. We are planning to do it this year. The new staff is just coming on. There will hopefully be trainings by the end of May and so by the last weekend of May into June. As far as I have knowledge now of course, in this world we are now things can change very quickly. But right now we are planning on having a peregrine falcon watch at the precipice again. Fantastic. Well that does it. I think we're still there and want to say a quick goodbye. But Patrick, thank you so much for coming on and teaching us about these awesome birds. I want to just run outside right now and go find some of my own. Thank you so much for the work you do and congratulations on on helping these birds come back. Thank you so much and hopefully you all again come out and see some of them. That's a great time. All right, take care everyone have a good night. Bye.


The First Item of Business this afternoon is portfolio questions, and the portfolio this afternoon is social justice. I make a plea again for succinct questions and answers, to allow us many members to have the opportunity as possible. Question number one I call Russell Finlay. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on its legal challenge to the decision of the UK government to issue a section 35 order in relation to the Gender Recognition Reform Scotland Bill. I gave a statement to this Parliament on the 19th of June on the reasons for the decision to challenge the UK Government's issue of a section 35 order, which the member was present for. In doing so, I noted the strict limits on what was possible for me to say in relation to that challenge, but that, in the interests of transparency, we were intending to publish the terms of the Scottish Government's petition for judicial review. Following that statement, the petition was published in full on the Scottish Government website. As the member will be aware, the Scottish Government cannot comment any further on what are now live legal proceedings. Russell Findlay. I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer. Two weeks ago, I asked the cabinet secretary to explain how the SNP can push its gender self-ideal law, while at the same time Humza Yousaf says that a rapist claiming to a woman is at it. The First Minister continues to tie himself up in knots over this fundamental contradiction. Will the cabinet secretary confirm that the SNP cannot answer that question? To do so, she would admit that her self-ideal law is wide open to abuse by male sex criminals. As the member will be well aware, the aspects around those who are in the prison estate often include individuals who do not have a gender recognition certificate and therefore are in the bill that was passed by the overwhelming majority of the members of this Parliament makes no change to the risk assessment that goes on in each individual case within the prison estate. To ask the Scottish Government when it last engaged with Social Security Scotland. As an agency of the Scottish Government, there is close engagement with Social Security Scotland on a daily basis. As cabinet secretary, I also meet regularly with the chief executive to maintain oversight over the activities of the agency. Thanks to that close collaboration, we have established a social security system based on the principles of dignity, fairness and respect. We are now delivering 13 Scottish Government benefits, seven of which are entirely new forms of financial support, available only in Scotland. Thank you, First Minister, for providing that clarity. As one of my constituents' application for adult disability payment claim was delayed due to their GP taking over five weeks to provide the key health information that is required for their application to progress, will the Scottish Government explore additional options to enhance communications between Social Security Scotland and GP to promote quicker decisions and quicker payments that avoid lengthy ways? Is there potential to streamline IT systems at GP surgeries to speed up this processing? There are a number of avenues that the agency is looking to ensure that they progress so that people can have their applications decided as quickly as possible. Obviously, GP's are only one of the sources of information that Social Security Scotland can go to. Therefore, the agency will give consideration whether it should be a GP or, indeed, another professional or someone else who knows that individual client well enough to be able to provide that supporting information. The agency is also working with partners such as GP's and GP practice managers to ensure that we are all learning from the still very new benefit that is now live. There have been a growing number of reports over recent weeks of Social Security Scotland website not functioning properly, with a number of my constituents waiting hours for responses from websites. What representations have been made to the cabinet secretary on how Social Security plans to fix these issues? There is a high demand both for web chat and on the telephone lines. Social Security Scotland has already taken action to try and ensure that clients who are phoning in are receiving more timious replies. The agency is also looking at what more can be done with the telephony system to improve the efficiency on that. I will be happy to work with the member and provide further updates on that in due course as the agency develops. We heard dignity, fairness and respect again as the guiding principles of Social Security Scotland from the cabinet secretary just as we did in 2019 when she spoke of the bill. We know that the Government has failed to deliver handing back social security powers such as the administration of carers allowance, so 2025 leaving thousands of Scots at the peril of the Tory run DWP. Indeed, as we have just heard from Jeremy Balfour, there are serious issues in terms of call handling and web chats and 28,000 calls to Social Security with people waiting more than an hour. I am sure that the cabinet secretary would reasonably recognise that that does not match that 2019 aspiration. Will she tell us what she has done since coming to post to review the operational performance of Social Security Scotland to ensure that it looks and acts like the system that was originally promised? Clearly, there had to be some changes to the timetable that we made clear at the time, particularly because of the impact of Covid, and that was not just because of the challenges with the agency or with the Scottish Government, but also the very understandable pressures that were on the DWP as it sought to assist people at the very start of that. I think that context needs to be borne in mind. I am heartened by the representations in the discussion that I had with another member today when we talked about what was felt by people who are being responded to by the agency in a way, as the member reported to me that they felt that they were being believed by the first time. We should take heart from the fact that we are delivering a system that has dignity, fairness and respect of the heart. Yes, there is more to do. Yes, we have much more to do. For example, on the waiting times for the processing of adult disability, the agency is taking action. I have met the chief executive and will continue to do so on a very regular basis, as we work through even further actions that can be taken to improve that. Eight to ten weeks was meant to be the maximum that anyone would wait for adult disability payment, but that is becoming the average. Has the Scottish Government misjudged this timescale on what is being done to address waits? We have, at this point, a four-month average processing time. One of the aspects that is a factor in this is that, unlike the DWP, the agency has responsibility for supporting information and the collation of that. We heard from the original question from Stephanie Callaghan that it sometimes takes other agencies and other organisations some time to reply to Social Security Scotland with the source of information that will allow a decision to be taken. That is exactly why the agency has already taken a number of steps to ensure that they are going to the right people. It is important to ensure that we also make sure that we take our time—not too long, of course, but we take the time to make sure that the eligibility is checked and that the decision is the right one the first time round, because what we do not want to see is what we have in a PIP situation, where many people were turned down and then had to take it on to appeal. It is taking an unnecessarily long time at the moment, but the agency has already taken a number of measures in place to ensure that that will improve. To ask the Scottish Government whether it has conducted any analysis of the potential cost to the public purse of introducing a minimum income guarantee. The work to define what a minimum income guarantee could look like for Scotland, including costs and delivery, is led by an independent steering group that comprises of a strategy group of cross-party MSPs, including Miles Briggs, and an expert group from across the third sector industry and academia. The expert group published an interim report that sets out early considerations for a minimum income guarantee in March, and will publish a full report next year, which I expect to include consideration of the costs of a minimum income guarantee. I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer. As the cabinet secretary mentioned, the Government's working group for a minimum income guarantee was established almost two years ago and, yes, it did produce an interim report in March, but it contained absolutely no information on the two most important questions—the level of the income guarantee and how much it would cost. Until the Government sets out the cost, that plan is a fantasy, but in two years it still has not managed to even do that. So why is the SNP Government wasting time and resources on pie-in-the-sky proposals? That is a deeply disappointing question from Annie Wells. I say that because when we were at the anti-poverty summit not just a few weeks ago, that was one of the areas that many campaigners strongly urged Government and Opposition parties to look at. That does not say that it is a simple answer, but it does not necessarily mean that it is all deliverable within the devolved context that we are in. However, I think that it is deeply disappointing to see that Annie Wells is ruling aspects out. I would presume that the questions that she has raised today have been issues that, for example, the cross-party MSPs that are on the strategy group are also challenging the expert group on. The current cost of living crisis, which is unprecedented in scale, comes on top of a decade of Tory austerity, exposing the insufficiency of UK Government's safety net. What difference would it make if key welfare and employment powers were held here in Scotland? One of the challenges that we have when we are looking to see how we can tackle poverty in Scotland is what we can do within the powers that we have. We have seen with the game-changing Scottish child payment that the Scottish Government is determined to move forward with what it can do here, but it is clearly the case that if we continue to have the vast majority of welfare and all of the employment powers that are held by the Tories at Westminster, we will consistently be held back in what we can do here. To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to encourage house building in Scotland. Over the course of this Parliament, we are making available £3.5 billion to support the delivery of more affordable homes. Within that £3.5 billion, we have published five-year local authority resource planning assumptions totaling £3.221 billion. That has provided the confidence, certainty and assurance that the housing sector needs to deliver progress towards our ambitious 110,000 affordable homes target by 2032 and building an achievement of having delivered over 118,000 affordable homes since 2007, over 83,000 of which were for social rent. Despite that answer, recently a £200 million project by the Get Living built to rent specialist aimed at building 1,500 homes in Glasgow was put on hold with a spokesperson for the group saying rent controls have unintended consequences that only serve to exacerbate the underlying problem. Will the Minister admit that his Government's rent freeze has negatively impacted house building and will he support Scottish Conservative calls for a housing delivery agency? Analysis of that policy is still going on at the moment and I am sure that Mr Harvie will pick up that in due course. There is a key thing in terms of the first question that you asked. As a context, only today we have seen the 12th interest rate rise in the row to 4.5 per cent. Construction inflation is also at 20 per cent. When it comes back to his own area, we have seen a 17 per cent rise in funding from the last Parliament in Glasgow area, and the south manager of which he always covers is a 30 per cent rise in that. I have just met a Glasgow council yesterday in terms of that and discussing how we take that programme forward. Social rented and affordable housing is incredibly important for my constituents. Can the minister say any more about the £3.5 billion programme that he has already referred to and how it is being targeted? I will probably refer the member to just a question that I gave in his area in Glasgow around the ambitious funding programme and the increase that we have done. As I mentioned, more than £3.5 billion has been directed towards delivering local authorities strategic priorities. I am planning to meet as many local authorities as I can, including Glasgow, which I met yesterday. 70 per cent of those needs to be delivered for social rent. From April 21 to the end of December 22, the programme has supported delivery of 12,430 homes for social rent. 77 per cent of which were total affordable homes delivered during this period. We are also supporting home ownership for those who need support through our Lyft shared equity scheme, which helps people in low to moderate incomes by their first home, with 1,678 households having benefited from the support in the same period. Constituents have contacted me concerned about the accessibility of their homes. Despite properties being advertised as wheelchair accessible, there are no fire evacuation procedures for disabled tenants. If there were to be a fire, they would be stuck in their homes and unable to get out. What could the Scottish Government do to ensure that emergency escape routes for disabled people are designed in homes and implemented when building properties from the start? Broadly, there is a fair in needs assessment that is being prepared at the moment in terms of how we tackle that particular issue. The issue that you raised, I am happy to pick up any specifics that you have and come back to you on that matter. Question 5, Pulswicki. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the delivery of the Scottish welfare fund. The Scottish welfare fund provides an essential source of crisis support and helps with independent living, since it began in 2013, and excess of £380 million has been paid to more than half a million households. A set-out in our response to the recently published independent review, we are working with local authorities and stakeholders to put in place an action plan with agreed improvements so that the fund continues to deliver for those in need. Pulswicki. Thank you, Presiding Officer. A research into the cost of living crisis from poverty alliance and the Scottish women's budget group last year recommended better promotion of the Scottish welfare fund. However, it has been put to me that Glasgow City Council feel they cannot promote the fund as it is oversubscribed, meaning that many low-income families in the city are unable to access this lifeline support. Given how much local authorities like Glasgow rely on central government for funding, will the cabinet secretary commit today to providing councils with the resources that they need to deliver this fund to families who desperately need it? It is certainly an obligation of local authorities to promote the fund to those who they think would require that or are in need of it. I take the question from the member in good faith, but I would say to him that this is my second portfolio question in social justice. It is the second time that I have been asked by a member from the Labour benches to be spending more on something. It is all very welcome, and I will listen very seriously to suggestions about how the Government can and should spend more money, but we also have to have a discussion about how that could be paid for, and that is a discussion that I would be more than happy to take forward with the member as we move forward. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I apologise for not being in the chamber at the start of those questions. As part of the Scottish Welfare fund, we see community care grants. Can I ask specifically what plans the Government has to reform that application process for families and individuals caring for someone who has been released from prison or young offenders institutions specifically for those payments to be made before they leave those institutions? The member raises a very important point. Clearly, we have had the review into the Scottish Welfare fund, and we are in the process of working out an action plan on that. If there is something that could be done in that area, I will be happy to update Mr Briggs on that in due course. The cabinet secretary will be aware that a big hit on the Scottish Welfare fund is the mitigation of the UK benefits sanctions. Does the cabinet secretary share my astonishment, and I am sure the astonishment of Mr Sweeney, that Labour has an eagle and pledged to scrap universal credit and will keep the sanctions regime? Therefore, is it not clear that change is not coming? It is a concern that we are seeing the UK Labour Party reneging on a number of pledges that they have, and the importance of that to the powers of the Scottish Government and the responsibilities of the Scottish Parliament is how challenging it is for the Scottish Government to continue to have to mitigate against UK Government policies. It is therefore deeply disappointing, but unfortunately not surprising that there is very little difference between the UK Labour Party and the UK Conservatives on a number of benefits sanctions. That is deeply disappointing, but it particularly shows that Scottish Labour continues to be the branch of the UK Labour Party. To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to tackle homelessness in South East Asia. Our ending homelessness together plan sets out how we will prevent and tackle homelessness nationally through the implementation of rapid rehousing, scaling up housing first, and introducing no-homeless duties that will ensure all public bodies work together to prevent homelessness. Since 2018, we have provided £1.94 million for the local rapid rehousing in plans in the two local authorities areas. Additionally, they receive over £1.24 million annually for homelessness prevention. We have also made available over £132 million for affordable housing in the two local authorities over this parliamentary term, which is an increase of 17 per cent on the previous term. The number of homeless applications for July to September has increased by 60 in a year in East Asia and by 41 for the same time period in South Asia. What engagement has he had with the local authorities and what specific plans the ministers have to develop a solution to rural homelessness? I thank the member for that question. In relation to meeting local authorities, I have already met Edinburgh and Glasgow, and I would be happy to meet the two local authorities that you talk about to talk about what their plans are and go into more detail in that regard. I think that there is more work that needs to be done with the local authority in that regard, so I am happy to offer a meeting with the member to go and discuss with the two local authorities. A supplementary question from Bill Kidd has been requested, and I am happy to take it, but I remind Mr Kidd that the question relates to tackling homelessness in South and East Ayrshire. Can the minister explain how proposed powers to raise council tax in South Ayrshire, and on second and empty homes, could help tackle homelessness by maximising the use of existing housing stock across the country? Our aim is for everyone to have a safe, secure and warm home. Local taxation is one measure that can influence ownership, patterns and availability of homes to meet local needs. When we introduce powers in 2013, enabling councils to vary or remove council tax discounts, a number of second homes reduced, and the rem new generated was ring-fenced for local affordable housing. Extending those powers to enable councils to choose to charge a council tax payment could further encourage behavioural change in how we use homes, and I look forward to seeing the responses to the current consultation on that Question 7, Stuart McMillan. To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to tackle child poverty in the Greenwick and Inverclyde constituency. We are providing a range of support that will benefit families in Greenwick and Inverclyde, and indeed across Scotland, including investment in the Scottish child payment, 1140 hours of funded child care, free bus travel for under 22s and the Scottish welfare fund.  I thank the cabinet secretary for that reply, and the cabinet secretary will be very much aware of the Trussel Trust's end of year figures for 2022-23, which indicate that the number of full bank parcels distributed in my constituency rose by 36 per cent. The figures for the whole of Scotland did show that the Scottish child payment seems to have had an impact as the rise of the number of households with children receiving full bank parcels was nowhere near the levels experienced elsewhere in the UK, but I am still concerned that it was not enough to protect every family from food insecurity. Does the cabinet secretary therefore agree with me that this shows that Scotland is taking a different approach to tackling child poverty, and if the UK Government is not prepared to match progressive policies, like the Scottish child payment, it should evolve in necessary powers so that we can go further to help low-income families in Gwyrwch, Llywodraeth, Clyde and across Scotland? It is very easy to see the contrast between the approaches of the Scottish and UK Government. You have the Scottish Government that not only introduced the Scottish child payments but has now went from the original campaign ask of £5 to the position that we are in at the moment. That is very, very important. At the same time, of course, you had the UK Government cutting universal credit by £20. The real challenge is that, for example, we are spending £84 million, making that available to local authorities, spending on discretionary housing payments, for example, directly to mitigate against UK Government welfare policies. That is a frustration, and it should be a frustration for everyone in this chamber. 8. Arianne Burgess To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it has had with local authorities regarding any preparations for the potential impact of the proposed illegal migration bill on asylum seekers currently accommodated in hotels in Scotland. The Scottish Government is deeply concerned that the UK Government's illegal migration bill will push people deeper into exploitation and destitution. We have urged the UK Government to stop the bill and focus on improving the asylum system to increase the quality and speed of decisions. That would reduce the number of people accommodated in hotels and the risk that they are left in prolonged limbo without the ability to work or access services. Asylum and providing accommodation is entirely reserved to the UK Government but, of course, has an impact on our local authorities. I will discuss that with the cosla spokesperson for community wellbeing when I meet her shortly. 9. Arianne Burgess I thank the minister for that response. Murray Council and Health and Social Care Murray will be supporting people seeking asylum arriving in my region over the coming weeks. How can the Scottish Government support the oversight group to ensure that our communities are fully involved in welcoming new residents and that we do not see a repeat of the short notice changes to accommodation arrangements seen in other areas? The new Scots refugee integration strategy provides a framework that can help planning to support people seeking asylum in line with our principle that integration should be supported from day 1 of arrival. New Scots was developed in partnership by the Scottish Government, cosla and the Scottish Refugee Council. Asylum and accommodation is reserved to the Home Office, which should engage with local authorities as early as possible. We believe that the Home Office also needs to provide long-term funding for local authorities and services, which recognises the true costs of asylum dispersal to local authorities and enables better support for people seeking asylum, as well as for those local communities. As the minister has outlined, the Scottish Government Council is in the third sector. I have worked well to implement Scotland's new Scots strategy, which supports refugees and asylum seekers into our communities from day 1 of arrival. For Westminster, to disrupt that good work would be unforgivable. Can I ask what communications the Scottish Government has had with UK Government counterparts to express Scottish communities' opposition to the bill? Yes, absolutely. The Scottish Government has made our opposition to this bill very clear. The Cabinet Secretary for Constitution wrote to the UK Government in March to say that we condemned the bill's cruel and inhumane provisions and to urge them not to proceed with it. On 25 April, the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice again wrote to emphasise Scotland's significant concerns and our intention to table a legislative consent memorandum due to the clauses that alter the executive competence of the Scottish ministers and to point out the opposition of this Parliament to the bill following a recent motion passed. Thank you, minister. That concludes portfolio questions. There will be a short pause before we move on to the next item of business, to allow front bench teams to change positions should they wish.


So what if we have an equation that includes a root? In general, we can solve a root equation of the form nth root of expression equals a using the same relationship we used to solve a power equation. From the nth root of x equal to a, we have a to power n equals x. Except there's one important change. Remember that when we write this notation nth root of x, we're referring to the principal nth root. On the other hand, we can raise any number, positive or negative, to the nth power. And this means it may be possible to have solutions to the equation a to power n equals x that are not solutions to nth root of x equal to a. These non-solutions are called extraneous solutions and should never be included as solutions. And so there are three things that are very important to remember about solving root equations. Because we have to worry about extraneous solutions, always check to make sure your solutions satisfy the original equation. Second, because there are extraneous solutions, always make sure your solutions satisfy the original equation. But possibly the most important thing to remember about solving root equations, always check to make sure your solutions satisfy the original equation. So, for example, let's take the equation square root 3x plus 7 equal to 5. So we can begin with the fact that if the nth root of x is equal to a, then a to the power n equals x. So if square root of 3x plus 7 is equal to 5, then 3x plus 7 itself is equal to 5 squared. Well, that's a nice, simple, linear equation that I can solve. And again, x equals 6 as a solution. So remember the three important things to remember about root equations. So we need to check if x equals 6 actually solves the original equation. So we'll substitute 6 into our original equation and see if we get a true statement, which we do so we're confident in writing down x equals 6 as our solution. Well, let's take a look at another one. Now remember, definitions are the whole of mathematics, all else is commentary. And if you really take this to heart, you have an easy, fast solution to this problem. And that's based on the definition of the symbol square root, which is the non-negative number whose square is equal to a. And what that means is that square root of a always indicates a non-negative number, which means it's impossible for the square root of 3x plus 7 to be negative 5. And so we might say that since square root of x always gives a non-negative number, there is no solution to this problem. Well, maybe you don't like doing things the easy way and would much rather do things the hard way. So we can try to solve this and see what happens. So remember, if the nth root of x is equal to a, then a to the power n is equal to x. And so I could rewrite this equation as 3x plus 7 is equal to negative 5 squared. We'll solve the equation. And because this is a root equation, we need to check back in the original equation. I get square root 25 equals negative 5, but this is false. Because remember that the square root symbol always gives you a non-negative number. So this x equals 6, even though it solved this equation back here, it did not solve the original equation. And so it should not be included as a solution. Now let's spend a few seconds thinking about how we might summarize our results. The best way to summarize our results is also the easy solution, which is recognizing that square root of x must always be a non-negative number, so there is no solution. But if you don't like finding the easy solution, and in particular, if you've done all of this work, you might want to at least mention it. And so one way you might do that is the following. We rewrote our equation as 3x plus 7 equals minus 5 squared. And we found that x equals 6 solves this equation. However, x equals 6 does not solve the original equation, so this solution is extraneous, and the original equation has no solutions. But again, you're really better off if you immediately recognize that principal square root always gives you a non-negative number, so equations like this are inherently unsolvable. How about cube root 8 minus 2x minus 3 equals 2? The first thing to recognize is that this is not in the form n-th root of expression equals a, and so we should use some algebraic manipulation to get it into that form. So let's take a look at this. Over on the left-hand side, we have a subtraction, so we can get rid of that subtraction by adding. And now we have it in the form root equals number. So we could raise both sides to the third power because this is a cube root. We'll solve our equation, and we'll check our answer, which works out.


Developing high performance, neutral media H2 evolution electric catalysts is important for clean and sustainable hydrogen energy, yet rare, expensive elements are most active. Here, authors show that metal organic frameworks modified with single ruthenium atoms as high performance catalysts. This article was authored by Yame Sun, Zixian Shui, Qinglin Liu, and others.


Welcome to NTN Nightly, I am Genelle Norville. This edition stops stories. Revised protocols for the management and containment of COVID-19 coming to effect December 1st, 2020. Special needs students and teachers receive digital learning devices. And St. Lucia celebrates another centenarian. The National Emergency Management Advisory Council, NIMAC, has revised the protocols for the management and containment of the community spread of COVID-19. A meeting of NIMAC was held Friday 27th November 2020, with stakeholders approving the revised measures as community cases continue to increase. As at the 27th November 2020, St. Lucia recorded a total of 246 confirmed cases of COVID-19. Of the total number of confirmed cases, 33 are imported and 213 are in country. The island has recorded two COVID-19 related deaths and currently has 135 active cases with a total of 109 recoveries. A total of 110 individuals are in isolation with another 365 in quarantine. Individuals ages 25 to 49 are most widely affected, with the age range accounting for 54% of the confirmed cases thus far. Dr. Sharon Belma George is the Chief Medical Officer. From what we are seeing, we have not yet peaked. We still notice an increase, although the rate of increase has reduced. In the beginning of the outbreak, our R0, that is our rate of transmission, was below zero. But as we progressed into October and November, we noted increases in our transmission rate, moving from 1.9 to 3.9 to 3.5. And we presently, in the last two weeks of November, we've noticed a transmission rate of 3. When we look a little bit closer over the last few weeks, we note that the steep trend that we saw in October, within the month of November, the rate of increase is less. So that is, it is beginning to plateau, that is the rate is less after the last two weeks in November. The Grozile district accounts for the largest distribution of cases, followed by castries, while laboratory leads having the highest incidence rate. Dr. Belma George urges the inclusions to adhere to all protocols, as non-compliance continues to put lives at risk. If an R, a transmission rate of 3, and having 127 active cases in country, it means that we are still in a very critical position and we are not in a position to yet relax the measures as we note that things are improving in country. There is a potential within the next 14 days of noting over a thousand cases, if we relax the measures or we continue to adhere to the protocols that have been recommended. From our forecasting, we predict that if we do not continue, if we don't adhere to the protocols, if we don't hold back, if we don't break the transmission rate, there is a possibility of more cases. Chief Medical Officer in the Department of Health and Wellness, Dr. Sharon Belma George. The revised protocols come into effect on Tuesday 1st December to Saturday 14th December. They include the continued recommendation to work from home where possible. Honourable Dominic Fadis, the Chairman of the COVID-19 Command Centre. We also have all business operations and commercial activities must end by 9 p.m. daily as guided by the COVID-19 Prevention and Control Act, Section 172B. And this basically sticks to closing all commercial activity by 9 p.m. to allow employees to get home by 10 p.m. Separate provisions, of course, will apply for necessary sectors such as the essential services, the construction, manufacturing and call centres, which we understand would have some very late work hours. We're trying our best as much as we can to create as little disruption to our economy as we attempt to strike the balance between the public health measures, but also to allow our economy to thrive. Recommendation number three includes restrictions on all social gatherings. We made one change here for churches. This particular slide would actually try to prohibit birthday parties, retirement parties, wedding receptions, funeral receptions, wakes, boat rides, beach picnics, et cetera. However, there are some exceptions that are made for the celebration including, if we can go to the next slide, Part B. There are some restrictions that are made for special religious rites including christenings, weddings, funerals will be limited to 25 individuals. So while, for example, in the case of a wedding, we're going to have the religious ceremony is not prohibited, neither is the christening nor the funeral service at the church level is allowed. It is prohibited for the social aspect, so the reception that comes with it. We're actually asking individuals to desist from that for the time being. The consumption of alcohol on premises remains prohibited. Stand-alone bars must close at 4 p.m. The takeaway or grab and go policy is in effect for bars until 4 p.m. Restaurants and food vendors will continue to provide takeaway services. And in the case of restaurants, we are allowing them to open until 9 o'clock as is the case for the times stipulated for all commercial activity to end. Recommendation decision number five rather restrictions on all sporting activity. This was a previous protocol, but we've made an adjustment here to allow for personal coaching and personal development to take place on a one-on-one basis. We have received a number of requests from national sporting associations for them to be able to allow for persons to receive the level of development that's necessary, especially national athletes. And we want to ensure that we don't endanger the level of performance or the success rate of our national sporting teams. Recommendation decision number six, special permission for face-to-face evaluations in those parts of the education system where students may have special examination preparations. We don't want to, for example, at the secondary school level endanger the performances of our students at the CXC examinations, nor at the primary school level where students are going to be preparing for common entrance in the coming months. So we want to ensure that we give all of our students the best chance to succeed. So we're allowing a limited amount of face-to-face tuition to take place in these cases. We also have made allowance for tertiary level schools in medical and natural science programs that may require the students to go into labs and to do practical evaluations. And so there will be a blend of face-to-face tuition and also virtually in order to allow for our students to be able to excel at their common entrance examinations. The Royal St. Lucia Police Force meantime remains committed to ensuring compliance with the laws of St. Lucia and all stipulated protocols in country to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The RSLPF on Friday 27 November 2020 intercepted two vessels attempting to enter the country illegally. These vessels were subsequently impounded. Deputy Commissioner of Police Milton Daisy is urging individuals to discontinue the practice and is calling on members of the public to report any illegal entrance to the country. To separate joint operations that is with the Marine Unit and territorial police, land police, we were able to intercept in these two instances two vessels coming in from MAPNIC.  Those persons in both instances were arrested. The DCP noted that there have been several breaches in the law and the protocols. He explained that in instances where a number of warnings had been issued, the businesses were shut down and individuals were arrested. There have been instances where at least 15 persons have been found in bars that are closed from the front. But the back door is either halfway opened or persons are inside carrying out activities. Now you realize that as part of the protocol, bars were only supposed to have been opened up to 4 p.m. daily and bars with grocery shops or restaurants and so on had to be, the closure time was 9 p.m. We have had instances where at 11.45 almost midnight police have to be closing bars. The police force will be employing protocol enforcement officers to assist in ensuring compliance. to the COVID-19 protocols. The force received over 500 applications and on Friday had selected the final cut. These individuals are scheduled to commence training next week. Following which they would begin their duties for other various districts under the supervision of a senior police officer. You would appreciate that to have persons new coming into the job that they would need some briefings, they would need some training in terms of writing reports that is writing station diaries, the mode of patrol and so on. During the initial training which we are expecting to be at least a week the officers would be paired with senior officers during patrol so that they would be acquainted with patrol procedures, what is required of them and so on. After which the officers would be good to be on the road performing their duties. Deputy Commissioner of Police Milton Daisy. In other developments, 130 special education needs learners across the island who lack access to technological assistive devices to effectively participate in online learning and to receive those devices through the Department of Education, Innovation and Gender Relations under the Education Quality Improvement Project. Irma DeMark has the details. The Ministry of Education is continuing efforts to improve the online learning experience for students and educators in St. Lucia. The Ministry has procured 130 learning devices which will be distributed to special needs students across the island to assist in education efforts as they transition to an online learning platform. This procurement was facilitated through the Education Quality Improvement Project Equip and was co-funded by the Caribbean Development Bank, CDB. Marie Grace Oguise is the coordinator for the Equip project. Earlier this year, the CDB saw it fitting that the Ministries of Education of borrowing member countries should be able to utilize funds already approved by the CDB itself to enable these countries to meet what are called eligible expenditure for interventions which have to be implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This is why the project coordinating unit was directed by the administration of the Department of Education, that's the PSSF, to provide within this year some level of educational support for special education to transition to the online modality. The Chief Education Officer Dr Fiona Filipe Maiaf addressing the handing over ceremony thanked the contributors for this donation and expressed her elation with the allotment of the learning devices to special education. So this is an opportunity to say thank you to Equip, thank you to the Caribbean Development Bank. We know that individuals make the difference, so somebody went out there to get us necessary resources and so there's a special responsibility that we must always take very seriously as leaders in the sector. Let the resources add value to the lives of our children. Let it not be a play toy, it's not a toy, it's an educational resource that can help a child who has particular difficulties get over those. The project coordinating unit directed by the administration of the Department of Education will continue the procurement of assistive learning devices to the special education sector into next year. From the Government Information Service, Homedi Mok reporting. Meanwhile, Caricum Ministers for Education have approved measures to tackle COVID-19 challenges to the sector at the special 25th meeting of the Council for Human and Social Development. Kendall Morgan of Caricum News Time reports. The ministers received a presentation by CXZ registrar Dr Wayne Wesley with recommendations on managing the registration, scheduling, administration and release of their exams going forward. The ministers have reviewed quality assurance and logistical challenges in the recent administration of CXZ results and the implications for exam integrity and administrative agility. The meeting received an accepted recommendation from the Caricum secretariat for the establishment of a digital skills task force to help lead a push during the current COVID-19 pandemic for accelerated skills development through digital and online learning. The ministers also renewed their commitment to the strategic pillars of the Caricum Human Resource Development 2030 strategy which they felt have gained greater resonance since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. They agreed to strengthen teacher preparation to facilitate mastery in the use of technology and to provide increased support to the early childhood education and technical and vocational education and training Tibet sectors. The meeting was chaired by the Bahamas Education Minister Mr Jeffrey Lloyd who was joined in presenting opening remarks by Guyana's Minister of Education Ms Priya Manakchand and Caricum Secretary-General Ambassador Erwin Larok. Kendall Morgan of Caricum News Time, ending that report. Three communities throughout St. Lucia receive weather stations under the Seven Crops Project. Harris Anise Antoine with more. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Physical Planning, Natural Resources and Cooperatives in collaboration with the Taiwan Technical Mission in St Lucia through the Seven Crops Project have established three weather stations in the communities of Babono, Denry and Shwazel. The data being provided by the weather stations will assist farmers in making more informed decisions on the cultivation of the crops and minimise loss due to changing conditions. Parliamentary representative of Shwazel Saltibus, Honourable Bradley Felix highlighted the importance of procuring modernised equipment to ensure the sustainability of the agriculture industry in St Lucia. I'm hoping that we take advantage of the predictions and the readings from the weather station so that we could make very sound decisions and not because your neighbour is planting tomatoes or potatoes that you decide to do the same thing, that we can vary what we grow and we can do it with the knowledge and the science behind it. So I am looking forward to a significant increase in production in the quality based on the readings that we will be getting from the weather station and I want to take the opportunity to thank the government and the people of Taiwan for their continuous assistance. Ambassador of the Republic of China, Taiwan to St Lucia, His Excellency Peter Chen, reaffirms his government's commitment to assist in ensuring a more resilient agriculture sector in St Lucia. The weather station before us is able to collect all sorts of data, rainfall, light intensity, wind speed and humidity. It's solar powered and can be remotely accessed by the internet. This is what new agriculture looks like. I have four confidence that this weather station are one of the important steps to achieving agriculture 4.0. We are honoured to work with St Lucia, a strong ally and with support from their partners like the United States on mutually beneficial goals with such meaningful impact. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Physical Planning, Natural Resources and Cooperatives encourages farmers to take full advantage of the new technology received when planning their production cycles. From the information unit of the Department of Agriculture, I am Manicia Antoine reporting. This is NTN Nightly. Please stay with us. In an effort to ensure patient and first responder safety, the St Lucia Fire Service has reviewed its patient transfer procedures especially for patients with respiratory distress. Face masks will be provided. At no time during transportation should the face mask be removed. Please be patient and cooperative during this time to ensure you receive the best possible care while keeping our first responders safe. Welcome back. St Lucia is celebrating another centenarian, Mary Michelle, also known as Multi Boy of Belfast Souffre, born on the 24th November 1920. At the age of 6 after the death of her mother, Miss Michelle lived with her maternal aunt. She married Mr. Pierre Joseph Michelle, also known as Edwin Michelle, at the age of 27 and bought 13 children, four of whom have since died.  Occasionally, she would vend the excess fruit and vegetables which grew on her husband's farm. Currently, Miss Michelle has challenges with both her vision and her hearing, and she is no longer ambulant. She is therefore fully dependent on others for her care. However, one thing which has remained fully intact is her jovial nature and her love of a good adult conversation, Pawel Guamun, family and friends gathered to celebrate her life and milestone. Today, we reflect on the celebration of life of our sister, Mary, and not many persons who lived to see a hundred years. You know, scripture says, 80, the lifespan is 70, and 80 for those who are strong. So, Mary Dwee Boy and Shai Souffre, born Belfast, a trip Belfast, yes. You know, so we have reason to celebrate. And, you know, I often say to people that we need to learn how to celebrate each other. You know, sometimes you have families and there's so much confusion in families that they do not have the time to appreciate each other and celebrate each other. You know, it's not like that, but that time it is too late. Living to a hundred is a blessing and we are thrilled to say the least to celebrate the blessing we have in Mama. What a privilege to have you here today with us.  Happy 100th birthday, Mama. It is indeed a pleasure to be here, to celebrate that milestone with her. Mama, we all love you. Thank you for having us. On behalf of the government and people of St. Lucia, the Elder Care Unit of the Division of Human Services has extended birthday greetings and the best of chair to Miss Michelle on the occasion of her 100th birthday. That brings us to the end of NTN Nightly. Join us next time at 7pm with a repeat at 7am. You can also catch up with us anytime on the St. Lucia Government Facebook page or YouTube channel. I am Channel Norvel.


We're excited about the year, you know, we've got a couple of weeks under our belt. I think we've, the guys have worked hard in practice, but we've, you know, we've played a couple of national ranked opponents already. You know, last week we went up to Oswego, had a, had a pretty good game up there. It fell a little short, but you know, I thought in terms of what our goals were for that night, we played hard, competed hard, put ourself in a, in a position to, to win the game. And then this past weekend with, with Wilkes here, I, I thought we, we cleaned some things up and, you know, made some plays, put some pucks in in the, in the back of the net and put our selves in a good position here. Moving forward into the week, I don't think the goals here ever change. You know, we want to win the Mac. We want to win, you know, we want to compete for a UCHC championship. That's our, our primary conference in the hockey side. And we want to continue to build our program and compete at a national level. I think offensively, we're going to have to get contributions from, from, from top to bottom. I think we've got a very good, young decor that can, can skate really well, can move the puck, you know, very well. So we've got high expectations of, of a lot of guys. And this is a good opportunity here this year for the team to be the team and the strength of the team to be the team. We got a good test here in Canton, you know, coming, coming in here for the, for the opening weekend, you know, we went up there last year. We know that they're a team that's going to play, play us tough. They're, they're, they're a hard work in blue collar, blue collar group. So we've got to be, you know, prepared and ready to get the season going on the, on the right foot. Yeah. And then we get going into, to the conference stuff. I mean, for us, like I said, the UCHC is our, is our primary goal and, and, and primary target. So we get going right away with, with Utica, who's, you know, kind of been the, who, in terms of the UCHC, the team we've all been chasing here the last couple of years. So I think we get a good opportunity right off the bat and conference play to see, you know, see where we're at and see where we need to get to, to accomplish our goals.  I think in terms of the last couple of weeks, we've, we've become a lot cleaner with the puck and started to make some plays. You know, we're, we're starting to get a little bit more comfortable here with, with special teams and power play. But I think the biggest challenge for us is, again, just kind of being hard to, hard to play against and playing fast. That's when we've been most successful. All the new guys have had a chance to kind of get in the lineup and, and, and play here early on, which is, which is always good to have those, those opportunities. But I think we've got a very good young decor. And we've got two freshmen that'll, I think can have pretty big impacts back there. And, and Jack Carlson and, and, and Aidan McDowell, we've got a couple newcomers, you know, up front in Conor McDonnell and, and John Mucella. And then we've got to transfer Sam Myers. So we're excited about where, you know, where all those guys fit in to, to the program. You know, again, I think that the strength of our team here this year should be the group. And if, you know, if, if we're all pitching in and doing our part, we can have a very successful year.


Hello friends, I am Sanjay Gupta. In this video, I am going to demonstrate you the use of str-alien predefined function with the help of c-programming. Before starting, you can note my information, you can follow or subscribe my YouTube channel through the URL youtube.com slash sanjaygupta underscore tech school. You can download my programming app Techimus which is available on Google Play. Now I am going to implement how you can use str-alien function which is predefined in string.h header file. So I am including two header files that is str-dio.h and string.h. So this str-alien is a predefined function and its header file is string.h. So str-alien function counts how many characters are available in a string. So now I am going to demonstrate you how it works. So suppose there is a string and I have an integer variable c. Now I am using printf which will display the message enter string on console to receive that string I am using datas. Now I want to count how many characters user entered inside str character array. So for that purpose I am using predefined function str-alien. So I have just passed str string into str-alien function. So str-alien is predefined function. So it will count number of characters which are available inside str and the result will be returned into c variable. Now I can print the value of c on console. So length equals to percent d and then c. So c will be printing the number of characters which are available inside str string and then return zero. So this way I have implemented this str-alien function which is predefined in string.h header file. Now I am going to execute this code. So I am entering the string sanjay. You can see the output it is showing six. So sanjay contains total six characters. That's why it is printing length as six. Notice that it is not counting null character which is available at the end of string. So before null character whatever is available in the str string str-alien function will count all those characters and the result will be assigned into the variable which is available in this str-alien function column. So here I have used c variable. So that's why c is printing the output on console. So this is the use of str-alien function which is predefined in string.h header file. So str-alien is the function which is counting total number of characters available in the string. So it's full form is string length. I hope you have understood whatever I have demonstrated to you in this video. If you want to watch more programming related videos you can follow or subscribe my youtube channel through the url youtube.com slash sanjay gupta underscore tech school. You can download my programming app tech image which is available on google play. Thank you for watching this video.