So far so good. The three nestlings at the Cathedral of Learning are all well fed and growing. Every day we gain more confidence that they’ll thrive.
Meanwhile we’re still puzzled why their mother, Hope, killed and ate the first-hatching chick as well as two of her four chicks last year. We don’t know the answer but we have many theories. It reminds me of a famous quote from Flannery O’Connor in Habit of Being (p. 502):
“The Theories are worse than the Furies.”
So who are the Furies?
According to Wikipedia, the Erinyes [also called the Furies] are ancient Greek goddesses from the underworld. They hear complaints brought by mortals against the insolence of the young to the aged, of children to parents, of hosts to guests, and of householders or city councils to suppliants. They punish those crimes by hounding the culprits relentlessly and hitting them with brass-studded scourges. Their victims die in torment.
Their most famous gig was to torment Orestes for killing his mother Clytemnestra who had an affair and killed his father Agamemnon. Orestes avenged his father’s murder but created a really big mess (read more here). John Singer Sargent’s painting of Orestes Pursued by the Furies shows how awful the Furies can be.
The Theories can be relentless, too.
We have lots of theories about Hope but no data to confirm or disprove them. (Hope eats the evidence.) The only thing we know is that she has repeated the behavior two years in a row and it’s so abnormal that we can find only a handful of similar incidents in all the history of peregrine nest monitoring.
We don’t have an answer but we can make ourselves crazy.
The Theories are worse than the Furies!
(photo of Hope and chicks from the National Aviary falconcam at the University of Pittsburgh. Reproduction of John Singer Sargent’s “Orestes Pursued by the Furies” from Wikimedia Commons; click on the image to see the original)
Thanks for sharing this interesting article and all your knowledge. So happy to see the three surviving well. Was worried there for awhile.
Good morning, lovely picture of Hope nurturing her young. Just a thought: Could Hope have bird post natal depression??
On 2nd. thought I know we will never know!
What clever and creative references! I loved reading this.. your inclusion of mythology and art while discussing our shared experience in the Hope saga took it over the top in the best way. As usual, your posts are wonderful food for the brain!
Could it be a chemical imbalance? Lead? Poison in food? I guess you oh can’t know.
So many theories, Mary! You’re trying to make us crazy, eh? 😉
Kate, what a wonderful, fascinating article. Thank you for being so informative! Have a great week.
Hope’s just crazy. At least judging by human standards. But peregrines aren’t humans, are they? She might be crazy by peregrine standards, too, but as long as she doesn’t eat all her chicks, she will contribute to the peregrine recovery.
I must say that Hope keeps a cleaner nest then Dori. So kudos to her. There are enough feathers at the Gulf nest to construct another bird. So far so good on the fate of the chicks. I am starting to enjoy watching the COL nest again. Hopefully these 6 chicks will prosper and eventually fledge. Rochester peregrines are about to hatch. Can hear the little ones peeping now in their eggs. Exciting times for the peregrines across the country.
Are there still three chicks? Hope & Terzo are there now & I just see two???
Patti, both parents are at the nest huddling with their chicks because we are having a severe thunderstorm and Tornado Watch right now.
I can tell that watching this family upsets and worries you often. With all due respect I suggest that you stop watching the Cathedral of Learning falconcam and switch to watching the Gulf Tower until the chicks are older at the Cathedral.
Thanks, Kate.
There is another Patti who posts…this is my first post this year.
Oh my! How confusing! Well, the suggestion applies to all of us, myself included.
Meanwhile, the storm is mostly gone so Terzo left the nest.
Watching Terzo work with Hope to shield the chicks from the elements while simultaneously trying to justify his staying a little longer than usual in a fairly full scrape to avoid the severe weather was quite entertaining. Another great feeding and some quality family time. I’m feeling good about this season.
Drugs make humans do inhumane things to each other i.e. kill. Brain altering temporarily or permanently. Drugs are all over our earth in everything. Could easily have gotten into Hope.
It unusual that such behavior doesn’t occur more often given the level pollution man has created.
So that’s where the word fury came from.
Thanks Kate.
Our running theory is that something was developmentally wrong with the chick(s) and Hope sensed that they would not survive or take longer to care for in comparison to the rest of her hatchlings.
From Dr. Hope Klug: “Filial cannibalism could be a way to root out offspring that take too long to mature and therefore require a little too much parental care—this strategy would conserve the parents’ energy for subsequent, faster-developing batches of young.”
Courtney, I don’t often respond to the theories but this one needs some adjustment.
“Filial cannibalism” means eating one’s siblings. Bald eagle & golden eagle chicks do this rather often. The parents don’t stop them from killing each other & the outcome is as Dr. Klug describes.
Hope practices infanticide –> mother kills her offspring. (Dr. Klug is not describing infanticide.)
Peregrine chicks do not practice filial cannibalism. Peregrine mothers are hard-wired to protect and care for their young, even when their young are disabled (There are too many examples to list. Here’s a stellar one of protecting no matter what: Dorothy at this nest in 2015).
I have not found anything in peregrine behavioral literature that describes a mother peregrine killing her young year after year and there are only 2 instances of peregrines doing it even once.
When it comes to hatching, Hope is an abnormal peregrine.
Here’s another theory to think about (I have no idea if it’s true): Hope lived at the Tarentum Bridge where pigeons nest in the superstructure. When she lived there I watched her explore nooks & crannies and pull out pigeon nestlings to eat. I’ll bet she ate pigeon eggs too. Maybe when her own eggs begin to hatch she has a flashback & mistakes her own chicks for food.
Yes, the theories are worse than the Furies!