After Pittsburgh’s Downtown peregrines visited the Gulf Tower a week ago, Lori Maggio says they’ve been hanging out at the Third Avenue nest site.
Lori walks to work across the Smithfield Street Bridge and can see into the nest from a distance. Her zoom camera shows what it looks like. There’s a peregrine in there!
On Saturday afternoon, February 10, I stopped by for a look and found both peregrines at home. One was at the nest ledge (closeup above is from Lori in 2016). The other was on a Lawrence Hall gargoyle. I took two lousy cellphone photos and marked them up.
If my camera was better, here’s what the gargoyle peregrine would have looked like (closeup from Lori in 2016).
The peregrines’ recent interest in the Third Avenue site might not mean they’ll nest there. Last year they hung out at Third Avenue right up to the day before Dori’s first egg but she laid it at the Gulf Tower. We won’t know which nest site she’s chosen until mid to late March.
There’s something in the Gulf Tower’s favor: The building below the Third Avenue nest site is under renovation, as shown in my nest-ledge photo. Dori won’t want to use the Third Avenue site if workmen are visibly active there.
(photos by Lori Maggio and Kate St. John; see photo credits in the captions)
This is the same situation in Rochester NY. Beauty and Dotca start courting at the Powers nest site. They seem to spend more time there pre and post nesting than they do at Times Square, yet once the egg-laying starts it is only the original site for raising their young.