I dropped by the nest a little after 5 pm, and shortly after I arrived there the male flew into the nest from the opposite direction (i.e. from the opposite direction if you were walking toward the nest from Glen Erin). I could see he was carrying almost certainly some kind of prey item in his talons (most likely some kind of deplumed passerine). He landed in the nest with it and left almost immediately. Further indications that he dropped off something were clear when the female then stood at the edge of the nest rim and was reaching down into the nest and making head and neck movements that would have been pulling at a food item. Unfortunately with the impossibility of seeing into the bowl from the ground what I couldn't directly see is what she was doing with the pieces (i.e consuming them herself or offering them to a hatched eyas). She was doing this for a period of 5-10 min.
This is, as we say, where the plot thickens...after presumably completing work on the food item, the female then flew off the nest and went off into the trees (couldn't keep track of exactly where she went). This was a bit surprising to me - it reminded me of what my female used to do last year after consuming a provided food item - she would usually feak on the tree branches, and would then invariably fly into a particular stand of pine trees before returning to the nest (to do what I don't know). If she was feeding an eyas and not consuming the prey herself I'm not sure why she would have left the nest. It's at this point I kind of lost track of who was where while walking around - a few minutes later an adult was back on the nest, but I don't know whether the female returned while I was looking around or whether the male switched off.
So this certainly looks fairly promising - until young can actually be seen it's probably impossible to be 100% sure of anything - theoretically the female could have been consuming the prey herself - but if so this pair are different than mine last year - with mine the female would always take food deliveries from the male for her off the nest (typically the male would land in a nearby tree and make a very short 'chip chip' beckoning call, at which point the female would fly off the nest and take the item, and consume it).
