Chicago Peregrine Falcon Blog

Mary, Matt and I did our first site visit of the year to the South Loop nest site. The building bought a new camera for the nest box, so we went up with the engineer to install the camera, ID the adults and count, weigh and measure the eggs.

I am happy to say that both Helen and Mr. M. are back at the nest this year. Mr. M. is still a little demon of the skies. In most cases, the females are the aggressive ones, but not at the South Loop. Mr. M. is an incredibly fast, amazingly agile flier. He looks you right in the eye as he comes in fast and low and then often at the last minute, tucks his wings in tight to dip under the broom. I do have to say, though, none of us were hit, although he gave it a hundred tries or so. I managed to get the broom under him every time so that his talons went whistling right through the bristles. That’s a good day.

Mr. M. and Helen are sitting on four eggs. The camera should be online soon. I’ll update the link here when it goes live.

Posted in Chicago South Loop

Met Mary, Piper, Ben Marks and his dog Chapin at Grant Park early this morning. Sean and I got some much needed “pup time”. I miss having a dog. I brought my scope and we watched the south loop site for awhile. Both adults were there, centering activity around the nest box. At some point, one adult (I think the male), killed a grackle and brought it to his mate, who popped up onto the ledge from the nest box vicinity. We’re going up to the site Thursday to fix the nest camera and check for eggs, so I’ll get the ID’s then, but from our position on the ground, I could see that one adult had black over green bands. The other landed on the ledge in a rather awkward, wobbly way, which suggested that the south loop male, with his deformed left leg. We’ll see on Thursday!

Posted in Chicago South Loop