Chicago Peregrine Falcon Blog

Finally, here is Wendy’s banding from 6/16/06. It’s my very first banding! Enjoy!

Posted in Chicago MCC

I did a bit of looking at my notes. Not sure I have this totally right yet, but I have the beginnings of a prey chart for this year. Someinteresting stuff on there! When the chicks came out, I noticed far fewer prey accounts. Herc and Max just didn’t make as many trips to the nestand I was too busy, at times, chasing down chicks to be able to watch what they were bringing into the nest. So, the last part seems a bit sparse. Anyway, here’s what I have:

Continue reading ‘Prey Species Inventory’

Posted in Chicago MCC

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July. Sean and I had a real whip-banger! We spent the whole day in the dark basement of our building, cleaning out our storage locker! Wooooo! Stop it with the HOLIDAY FUN!!

Seriously, though, it is nice to heave the junk. We have a massive pile of stuff waiting to go to Goodwill and have much more room to gather more stuff.

First off, here’s a short version of the MCC Peregrines 2006 year:

• Day 1 (May 6): The chicks probably hatched around this date.
• Day 35 (June 9): The male followed by two females jump up onto the ledge for the first time.
• Day 37 (June 11): All four chicks are on the ledge.
• Day 38 (June 12): The male fledges.
• Day 40 (June 14): The male grounds, is picked up by animal control and taken to a raptor rehab. Mary doesn’t find out until the 26th.
• Day 42 (June 16): Two females (Wendy and Beth) fledge, two go down, two are re-released as they are unharmed in the grounding.
• Day 43 (June 17): The last female (Lesley) fledges.
• Day 44 (June 18): Lesley grounds and in recovered.
• Day 45 (June 19): Lesley is re-released as she was unharmed in the grounding. Beth grounds again and is taken to raptor rehab.
• June 26: Mary transfers the last male to a rehab center closer to her house. He is just fine and will soon be released.
• July 4: Beth is euthanized.

Posted in Chicago MCC

I’ve seen both chicks in the area from time to time, usually at dawn or dusk. Although the picture above is murky (due to the distance and dusk), I could see it was a juvenile through my scope. It’s kind of a lonely picture, I think!

So, I have hard news to break. The MCC chick we named Beth had to be euthanized. Everyone thought she would be just fine, but she took a turn for the worse. When Dan and Preston found her on the 19th, she was laying on the ground in an alleyway. She continued to lay down until the zoo vet gave her fluids, which caused her to perk considerably. Mary transferred her out to raptor rehab and they kept working with her, though she seemed wobbly.

She visited a vet with training treating raptors several times. He determined, very early on, that she had an infection rather than an injury. We all felt confident she’d respond well to the antibiotics. She did not. She continued to go downhill and finally the vet recommended she be euthanized.

She most likely contracted Aspergillosis, which is a fungal disease birds get in their respiratory tracts, sometime between her first and second groundings. Since both her sisters, her parents and brother all seem hale and hearty and the disease spreads very easily, she must have gotten it when she was on her own. She either ingested spores or inhaled them – that we will never be able to determine. However, there is no effective treatment for Aspergillosis once a bird has contracted it.

While this is sad news for me, I find it easier to take when I keep several things in mind. First, wild animals run into all sorts of trouble. The average age of death is fairly low. This is just how nature keeps the books and there is good reason for things to work that way. Second, there was nothing we could have done to prevent this. By picking her up, getting her treatment and providing a great hospital environment, she at least didn’t suffer any more than she had to. In the wild, her end would have been far harder for her, so we all helped give her a much more merciful end.

Rest in Peace, Beth.

Posted in Chicago MCC

Well, the 2006 season is mostly over. At this point, no news is good news as the chicks have fledged and are on their way! I wish all of them very good luck. Not to be morbid, but they are sort of going to need it. They have about a 50-50% chance of survival in these first, hard two years.

I’ve been thinking of looking at the database to see what happened to the MCC chicks over the years. As well, I feel I should read about the project in general, so I can answer questions more effectively.

The Chicago birds have an interesting history. I’ve looked up any information I could find on the chicks in their birth biography. Many of the chicks fly off and are never seen again. One hopes that most of them went on to find a mate and breed undetected!

Posted in Chicago MCC

Last night, Preston stopped by my house to drop of a set of pictures. I’d asked him to look through his collection and see if he had anything that might give us a look at Max’s leg bands.

Anyone who’s read this far knows that Max is not really Max. When I finally score his leg band numbers, his name will, more than likely, change from the one I’ve favored to the one he was given as a hatchling by his banding crew. As I looked through the pictures, I found a few that provide evidence for at least the top number, which is more than I managed taking 200 or some odd pictures of Max over this last two months.

So, here’s the first in the series of Max bringing a pigeon to a bunch of very hungry, very aggressive chicks. You can see the rest on my flickr site:

Here’s a kind of sweet series featuring Max feeding a very polite, very patient chick:

And here is a series of Max on the Monadnock:

And that’s it! Thanks so much Preston!

Posted in Chicago MCC

Phew! After that rash of huge, long reports, I have another short one. Nothing really new to add. All seems quiet on the falcon front. Again, last night I saw one bird atop the EPA building roof and four birds flying around in a dizzying fashion over the EPA airspace. Since we know that the male of the clutch and Beth are at SOAR, we must assume the birds are Max, Herc, Lesley and Wendy as any other birds in that territory would be attacked and driven away.

I finally got my field notes in and will now back-track to spiff up the very early installments that Sean and I just ported over from my old site “as is”. So, check back and read back, because I may have more pictures up.

So, back to work for me! Have a good day, everyone.

Posted in Chicago MCC