Yesterday afternoon was full of adventure for one of the five young peregrines at the University of Pittsburgh.  It’s an incident that happens every year but this time we saw it on video.

Just after 2:00pm one of the male nestlings was daydreaming on the front perch when his brother decided to use the nest as a runway. Flapping wildly and paying no attention, his brother careened to the front of the box.

Bump!  Whoops!  The young male was knocked off his perch into the gully two feet below.

The nestling was fine, he wasn’t hurt, but he had never encountered this situation before and didn’t know how to get back to the nest … yet.

When his parents found out what happened they did what all peregrine parents do — they withheld food until the youngster was hungry enough to come get it.  Nothing motivates a young peregrine so much as hunger.  He’ll even learn to fly if it’s the only way he’ll get fed.

So all the nestlings waited.  And waited.

At 4:50pm Dorothy stopped by to check and offered a scrap of meat from the corner of the nestbox.  It wasn’t a real meal.  The nestling below did not come up.

“Well,” thought Dorothy, “they’ll just have to wait.”

At 5:15pm she perched on the nestrail above his best escape route and looked down on her son in the gully.  He was fine.  He just had to figure it out.

Finally, after 6:30pm, he discovered he could get back to the nest if he went to the spot his mother seemed to indicate and scrabbled up a bulwark on the left side of the box.  (This area isn’t visible on the camera.  I happen to know what it looks like up there.)

The noise riveted his siblings.

Suddenly he appeared on camera!  They stared at him in wide-eyed wonder.  “What happened?  Are you OK?”

He stared back, then went to a corner to preen.  “I’m fine.  Give me a break.”

It wasn’t until 8:00pm that Dorothy finally brought them a real meal and by then they were so hungry all five screamed at the tops of their lungs.

“Good,” thought Dorothy, “The prodigal son returned.  It was well worth the wait.”

p.s.  To see how it happened, watch these two hotspots from the Cathedral of Learning archives: “Bumped out of the nest” and “The adventurer returns.”  Thanks to Jennie Barker for spotting these!

p.p.s.  Now that one of them has been off the nest, the other four will be brave about ledge-walking too.  You often won’t see all five on camera.  They’re getting ready to fledge.

(photo from the National Aviary webcam at the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning, video from the lost archives of Wildearth.tv)

I couldn’t resist using the slogan of the Westinghouse Electric corporation from the old days when they made home appliances.

The company is long gone, dissolved by a series of buy-outs and takeovers, but the Westinghouse Bridge that carries Route 30 over their old plant site in East Pittsburgh is still there.  And it hosts a new family.

Last month PennDOT workers were stunned when they were vigorously attacked by one – sometimes two – peregrines when they attempted to work on a particular area of the Westinghouse Bridge. They called the Pennsylvania Game Commission and Beth Fife came over to check.

On her first visit Beth found no eggs, but on her second she found a female peregrine and five eggs carefully laid in deep gravel in a dark, protected area of the bridge.  Beth could see the bird was banded but could not read her bands.  She hoped the pictures would reveal the peregrine’s identity.

And here is one of those pictures, taken April 29 by PennDOT’s Val Roskosh.

This image was too far away to read the bands but Beth went back later and got a closeup.  That’s how we found out this female peregrine hatched May 10, 2005 at the Bank One building in Canton, Ohio.  She was named “Storm” at banding.  The PennDOT crew plans to call her “Val.”

As of Friday, Storm’s eggs had hatched and she and her mate, nicknamed Brian by PennDOT (no bands read on him yet), are now busy feeding their babies.  Beth will return to the bridge to band them.

Good luck, Beth.  This mother bird was calm when you visited her eggs but I bet she’ll kick up a Storm when you come back!

(photo of Storm (a.k.a. Val), the female peregrine at the Westinghouse Bridge, by Val Roskosh)

At the peregrine banding this morning we learned there are three male and two female chicks at the Cathedral of Learning this year. 

It was a typical banding day. 

For starters, it rained.  Guests and officials assembled in the banding area with suppressed excitement.  The media arrived with several reporters, photographers and a TV camera crew.

The adult peregrines became wary as banding time approached.  They probably guessed something was up because of the indoor noise and the memory that their chicks are banded every year at this age. 

Dorothy perched atop the snapshot camera.  E2 waited on the roof to swoop at intruders.   

As soon as Beth Fife and Doug Dunkerley of the Pennsylvania Game Commission began to approach the nest E2 flew by, kakk-ing in alarm, and Dorothy jumped into the nest with wings spread and hackles raised.  “Stay away from our babies!”

Beth captured Dorothy in a large net (like a butterfly net) and handed her into the building so she and Doug could collect the chicks without being attacked.  Then Beth gathered the chicks into two large pasteboard boxes and brought them indoors.

All five chicks and their mother received health checkups from Dr. Robert Wagner from University of Pittsburgh Veterinary Services.  The chicks were weighed to determine their sex and then banded.  Three boys and two girls.  All healthy.

The banding took only half an hour and then Beth and Doug were ready to return them to the nest, but not before cleaning up the mess — enough to fill two plastic grocery bags.

Believe it or not an avid young birder is now in happy possession of Dorothy’s garbage.  Just as he did last year, he will identify the feathers and determine what prey the peregrines are eating.  Some of us took a quick look at the debris and identified blue jay, oriole and possibly indigo bunting feathers.  But we couldn’t look long.  It smelled bad! 

When the chicks were safe in the nest, Dr. Todd Katzner released Dorothy who flew back to the nest immediately and saw that her kids were fine.  Beth looked out to make sure Dorothy was OK and, in a parting shot, Dorothy got the last word.  She swooped at Beth’s head and nearly hit her.  Yow!

“Don’t mess with my nest!”

(photos by Kate St. John and from the National Aviary snapshot webcam.  Watch the streaming cam here)

The young peregrines at the Cathedral of Learning will be banded on Tuesday morning, May 18. 

The best – and only – time that PixController can perform on-site maintenance on the streaming webcam is when the young are away from the nest.  So the Cathedral of Learning broadcast will be down during the banding. When the camera comes back up the nestlings will be back in the nest with their new “bracelets.”

For information on peregrine banding, see the Banding FAQ.