Chicago Peregrine Falcon Blog

Man, it’s been one LONG and hot weekend.

As it turned out, Sean was on call this weekend too and spent much of it at the office. I spent most of the weekend at “the office” too, if you count standing under nesting ledges an office environment. For the record, I do! At any rate, I spent morning, noon and night this weekend watching over the Loop-A chicks, watching for the MCC chicks and looking for signs of any grounded Wacker fledglings.

Continue reading ‘Loopy’

Quick updates on fledglings!

Deborah wrote to report that all of the Evanston chicks have fledged successfully. Also fledged Sunday (the 14th), grounded and was replaced on the nesting ledge by Deborah. He took his second flight Monday. Ean, Deborah and Elinor fledged also on Monday the 15th. Deborah-chick went down on her first flight and Deborah-human rescued her, fitting I think! Deborah-chick took a bit of time to recover from her first flight, causing some anxiety amoung her humans, but was up in the air in spectacular fashion the next day.

The Evanston crew, headed by Deborah, have had a few big adventures with the four new Evanston peregrines. Although I could give you the skinny here, it’s MUCH better reading in their own words on the Evanstonpfwatch page.

Isabel wrote to say that both the UIC boys have fledged successfully as well. When considering these two nesting spots – Evanston and UIC – the UIC nest provides such a radically easier fledging area! UIC has miles of open sky surrounding the nest and many trafficless places to land, whereas the ledge in Evanston is surrounded by taller buildings and close to busy streets. Thank God for the Deborah and the Evanston crew!

Yesterday, in the late afternoon, I received this email:

Hi there – I’ve had a falcon sitting on my office window ledge since 10 this morning and he doesn’t appear to be in a hurry to go anywhere. I found your blog while trying to get information to help me determine if he’s just visiting or is injured. We’re on the 12th floor of [of a building on] W Jackson across from the Sears Tower. I’ve been trying to see the info on his leg band but can’t get much other than I think it’s red and maybe another color and might have B18 on it? I’ll keep looking and let you know. He seems to have some down still on his head and a bit on his back like maybe he molted? I don’t know – but he’s definitely not afraid of people and seems to enjoy us.
Thanks!
Monica

Since she’d kindly included her work phone number in the email, I called her to ask some questions about how the fledgling looked. I was quite pleased by her excitement regarding her special visitor and further pleased to hear that her office mates were equally enthralled. On a first flight, a fledgling can hardly ask for better circumstances than that!

Continue reading ‘Carlos’

Well, fledging has begun here in Chicago and that means lots of running about.

I got a call from Mary about an hour and a half ago saying that one of the Wacker chicks was grounded by the Sears Tower. Since Mary had just turned into her driveway and was at least an hour and a half or more from the museum, she asked me if I could take care of it. She told me she’d been contacted by the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors and that one of their volunteers was on site.

I called the bird monitors and told them I was on my way. Turns out the monitor on site, also named Mary, works right across the street so she’d been over to take a look and said the baby seemed to be fine. Good!

I hadn’t brought the peregrine carrier (it hasn’t been a cat carrier for years now, so time for a name change), so I had to stop by home on my way to the Sears. It was a good thing, too. I don’t know WHAT possesses me sometimes, but this morning I walked out of the house with a pair of sandals on my feet – during peregrine fledging season. The last thing you want when you are trying to catch a feisty peregrine chick is to be wearing entirely unsuitable footwear. So, when I got home, I took a second to change into my old reliable work boots.

Continue reading ‘Wacker Chick Down’

I’ve spent considerable hours this weekend monitoring the MCC site from the ‘el platform. In all the hours I was out, both morning and evening, I did not see one peregrine, adult or juvenile. As well, I didn’t hear any squawking from inside the nest (that’s been pretty loud in the years I’ve been watching) or see any big clouds of feathers drifting out, kicked up by chicks exercising their wings down in the nest and out of sight.

Dan and another EPA worker, Janet, have been emailing me with updates from their end. Neither one of them has seen any activity at the MCC for some time now.

Continue reading ‘Weekend Monitoring’

Today, I had a nice outing with Mary. We went to Pilsen, which is one of our favorite nesting sites.

Just a refresher, last year, the adult male Lyn’s mate Bryanne died before the pair’s four eggs hatched. After her death, Lyn tried to brood the eggs by himself, but eventually abandoned them. I think this is rather a mercy because it would have been very, very hard for him to raise four chicks by himself and he likely would have lost a few.

This year, we were really hoping we’d see him back in the nest box, but alas. Although our people at the site told us he was in the area, it seemed he didn’t find a mate in time for the season. Or, didn’t he?

Continue reading ‘A New Pilsen Pair?’

My plea to the masses worked! Today, I had email from Frank, who volunteers with the Canadian Peregrine Foundation, our good brothers and sisters to the north! It seems that he and his were probably responsible for the band number searches I saw on the site yesterday! MYSTERY SOLVED!!

Thank you, Frank!

I had a nice couple of email back-and-forths with Frank. He asked me about rumors he’d heard of a Toronto bird nesting down here and I, sadly, had to inform him of Etienne’s death. He expressed sadness that Etienne had been lost, but said that like all of us in this biz, he knows that’s part and parcel of this gig.

He also filled me in on a couple of their nests and reminded me that I needed to check out their page, which I did over the weekend. Looks like they’ve got a whole LOT going on up north and I urge anyone who is a peregrine enthusiast to spend some time reading their nest site updates. I guarantee it’ll eat some hours, but it’s well worth it.

Tomorrow is the love of my life’s birthday, so I’ll probably go check the MCC nest (if it isn’t pouring rain) and then take a day off from peregrines to heap attention on my man. I’ve got a really good idea for a dinner out!

Later!

I took a quick minute out today to check out the stats for this blog and found something interesting. Three people found this blog by searching this string: black b over red d peregrine

I’m crazy with curiosity! Did someone see this bird in Illinois? Did several people? It’s a midwestern band, for sure, and could belong to yet another Froedtert Malt (Milwaukee, WI) female named Erin, who was born in 1998. That, of course, would be if the B and the D looked like they were tipped over on their left sides. If only the D looked like it was tipped over on its side and the B looked horizontal, than the band would belong to a 1996 female born at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN named Skymaster (great name!).

So, if you are someone who has found their way to this blog because you saw a bird band and are trying to figure out where to log the sighting, please feel free to email me at sware@fieldmuseum.org

You can do this even if you didn’t see the bird in Chicago or even Illinois. Mary has contacts with other monitors around the midwest and the sighting should be logged into our database!

Good LORD, my curiosity is killing me. Ta!

Ok, a quick post just to update on two developments!

A pair is definitely active in Pilsen and have been ID’d at the old nesting site. The adult male has been confirmed to be “Lyn” (unnamed), b/g L/N (2000; Broadway, Chicago, IL). The adult female is new to our area. Her name is Amazon, b/g R/38, and she’s a young little thing! She was born in 2008 at the WEPCO Oak Creek Power Plant in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. The pair seems to be hanging around by the nest box, but there’s no sign that they nested this year.

It does my heart good to see that Lyn has found a new mate after losing Bryanne last year. Mary tells me that it’s a very good sign for nest season that Lyn is introducing Amazon to his nesting ledge this season. I would really love to see those two successfully nest next year. I may have some more information tomorrow as Mary and I plan to go out to the site and have a look for ourselves!

A few days ago, I had another pleasant surprise when I heard from last year’s St. Mary’s monitor, Kevin. He had a really nice picture of a pair of adults on the top ledges of St. Mary’s. It was great to see the pair confirmed and even better to hear from Kevin!

Another Midwest Peregrine Falcons group member, Profiles of Nature submitted some great pictures of the Uptown family, including a really excellent picture of the Uptown chicks. They are very, very close to fledging, as you can well see in the picture. They aren’t the only ones! We have a number of nests with young ready and raring to go.

I’m buckling my seat belt now!