Yesterday Tom Keller of the Pennsylvania Game Commission checked several peregrine bridge sites to get an estimate for hatch and banding dates.  His visits solved two mysteries.

At the Westinghouse Bridge we’ve been debating the identity of the female peregrine ever since Dana Nesiti captured photos of her bands last month.  By mid-April we decided that they read Black/Green 66/C so I wrote “Surprise!  Canton, Ohio’s “Storm” has regained her nest site after a three year absence.”

But that seemed more surprising than was actually possible.  Storm is 10 years old and would have re-won the site from six-year-old Hecla who triumphed over her in 2012.  Where did Storm go for three years?  Why didn’t she come back earlier?  We doubted the band was 66/C.  It was Curiouser and Curiouser.

Tom Keller solved the mystery.  Storm was so angry when he approached her nest that she nailed his helmet half a dozen times and he got a very good photo of her bands (66/C).  He also got a blurry photo of the male’s bands, below.  Art McMorris says that the partial reading indicates the male is from Virginia.

Meanwhile, we were disappointed but not surprised to learn that Tom found no evidence of a peregrine nest at the Tarentum Bridge.  Hope (69/Z) has kept the bridge as her territory but she doesn’t have a mate and was not aggressive when Tom walked the catwalk.  The good news is that she dug a scrape in the new nestbox.  We hope she has a mate next year.

Stay tuned for Banding and Fledge Watch dates at the Westinghouse Bridge.

Westinghouse, Yes!   Tarentum, alas, is No.

(photos by Tom Keller, PA Game Commission)

LATE BREAKING NEWS! A young male (still brown) was seen with Hope at the Tarentum Bridge this morning.