2 September 2024

Yesterday’s cooler weather was a welcome relief after the long heat wave. Carla and Ecco took advantage of the breeze to spend time in the sun at the Pitt peregrine nest.

Carla preened and the pair bowed to cement their bond as seen in this slideshow.

23 July 2024

The Center for Conservation Biology (CCB) has been monitoring Virginia’s peregrine population every year since the late 1970s. Because they track individual adults, they know who breeds where and when they go missing. This year the news was disturbing. Peregrine adult turnover statewide more than doubled in one year to a new rate of 40%. Forty percent of the adults disappeared (died) and were replaced by a new bird.

The only good news is that the high rate is skewed by the incredibly high turnover of 63.2% on the Eastern Shore while the rest of the state was 12.5%. The bad news is that the Eastern Shore has the highest concentration of breeding peregrines in Virginia.

The map below, from Virginia peregrine falcon monitoring and management program: Year 2017 report on ResearchGate, shows peregrine territories in 2017. There are more territories nowadays but the relative concentration remains.

Recoveries of dead and dying peregrines indicate the culprit is avian flu, a problem experienced in other states as well.

Why is avian flu taking a toll on the coast but not inland? Read why in this blog at the Center for Conservation Biology.

p.s. I have not heard of this problem occurring in Pennsylvania, perhaps because our turnover rate mirrors Virginia’s inland statistics.

In 2023, out of 35 breeding pairs in Virginia statewide, 26 were on the coastal plain.

9 July 2024

July is usually a boring month for peregrines in Pittsburgh. It’s hot. Nest duties are over. The adults are molting. But this week there are two bits of news.

Monaca-East Rochester Bridge:

On Monday morning, 8 July, Jeff Cieslak checked for peregrines along the Ohio River and stopped by the Monaca-East Rochester Bridge. He usually looks on the Monaca (south) side but yesterday he checked East Rochester (north) as well. There he found two fledglings and one adult, pictured here.

The Monaca fledglings appear to be about 4-5 weeks younger than those at Pitt, putting their hatch date in late May and egg laying in mid-to-late April. Such a late nest makes me wonder if the first nest failed or if there was upheaval at this site with a change of partners that took until April to settle down. We’ll never know.

Cathedral of Learning: What was she looking at?

On Sunday 7 July Carla visited the nest from 5:08p to 7:36pm. In that 90 minute period she was very alert when jumped she up to the snapshot camera. I wonder what she was looking at.

p.s. You’ll notice Carla’s feathers aren’t particularly smooth. She’s molting.

5 July 2024

At the Cathedral of Learning the adult peregrines, Ecco and Carla, are staying close to home as they molt in the summer heat. Their two youngsters have been flying now for almost five weeks and are hunting on their own, widening their range until they disperse to peregrinate for two years.

Nowadays I rarely see the Pitt juvies so I was happy to discover that “Yellow” stopped by briefly on Tuesday 2 July as seen in the slideshow above. It’s been more than a month since our youngsters walked off camera. No one on the falconcam. So here’s a little video delight.

C&C Saladin recorded these youngsters at the Terminal Tower in Cleveland on 25 June. Almost a month younger than the Pitt juvies, these two had not fledged yet. C&C Saladin describe that they’re doing.

These two male juvenile peregrines, here at 36 days old, demonstrate their curiosity and their instinctive ability to track moving objects as they watch two barn swallows that were flying around and catching bugs near the nest ledge. They also demonstrate their distractibility, as each takes a moment to stretch. The slightly more developed (less downy) juvie stretches after the juvie on the left, also showing their imitative behavior.

— description from C&C Saladin on YouTube