When you want to identify a banded peregrine it pays to find a good photographer.

In the old days we read peregrines’ bands using scopes and binoculars but it was notoriously difficult and nearly impossible at high nest sites like the Westinghouse Bridge.

We usually learn the females’ bands on Banding Day because mother peregrines guard the nest, but the males always remain a mystery because they never come close.

However… when the Hays eagle’s nest failed this spring, Dana Nesiti (Eagles of Hays PA) was casting about for a subject to photograph.  Site monitor John English invited Dana to the Westinghouse Bridge.

Right off the bat, Dana documented an unusual changeover.  Early in nesting season his photos showed the resident female was still Hecla (black/red, 68/H) but on April 12 the bands looked different.  His photo of black/green, 66/C revealed that the former resident Storm had ousted her rival.  We would never have known this without Dana’s photos.

Then on May 30 the PA Game Commission’s Art McMorris visited the Westinghouse Bridge to check on the peregrines’ nesting status.  Dana took photos from below while Art found two 5-day-old chicks and three unhatched eggs.   Several photos of the male were good enough to read the bands: black/green, 19/W.

It took a while to find out where this bird came from but it was worth it.  He hatched on Cobb Island in 2006, a barrier island on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, and was hacked at the New River Gorge, West Virginia as part of the peregrine restoration program.  He had no name.

A Google map of Cobb Island is embedded below (zoom out to see more).  Click here for information on the New River Gorge peregrine program.

Now that he’s nesting this bird gets a name.  John English named him “George” for George Washington of Virginia, George Westinghouse of the Westinghouse Bridge, and the gorge (almost george) of the New River Gorge, West Virginia.

Thanks to Dana Nesiti we now know that Storm and George are at the Westinghouse Bridge.

Photos solved the mystery.

(peregrine photo by Dana Nesiti, map embedded from Google Maps, bridge photo by Kate St. John)