Peregrine Falcon Field Notes-June 1, 2007

June 1, 2007

Banding has begun

We have just begun the banding season and just finished a terrific day banding a total of seven chicks at two urban sites. The sites were quite similar, yet very different at the same time. The sites were the famous Mayo Clinic in Rochester and the Cedar Riverside apartment building in Minneapolis.

Mayo Clinic
The first site, at the Mayo Clinic, is one of my favorite sites to do field work, because it is the site that housed the first peregrine I ever handled. The staff and volunteers are very excited for us to come and band the young, especially since there had been many years of inactivity. Mayo has been one of the original urban sites in the state and has 20 years of experience with the peregrine project. There are staff here that know more about the individual birds than I can keep track of and are proud of their role in peregrine recovery -- some who have come every year since the first chicks were released in 1987.

It is also one of the more “public” bandings we do, where the community is invited to watch us band the young falcons in one of the clinic auditoriums. There are usually press from the local TV station and newspaper on hand to get thoughts and comments from the audience about the event, which is broadcast throughout the clinic system -- from us getting the chicks from the box while the adults fly overhead to when we return them to their parents as they wait on guard at the nest box. Lastly, there is a naming contest where hundreds of names are entered and only a few are selected, depending on the number of chicks that hatch. This year, there were four very healthy female chicks that were banded at about 25 days of age.

Cedar Riverside
The second site is the Cedar Riverside apartment complex in downtown Minneapolis. This site is fairly new to have a pair of peregrines on territory (2004), and is home to one of the most defensive females we encounter in any of the 40 sites throughout Minnesota and North Dakota. The banding is not a public one, but much more private -- basically the banding team of four people and sometimes a staff member or two from the building to watch.

The banding team here is larger than usual to deal with the defensive female that resides here: Phoebe is an escaped falconry bird from Kansas, and has shown us on every opportunity that she does not appreciate our presence on the roof and near her chicks. We have two people guard the person climbing the ladder to the box, the person grabbing the actual chicks from the box, and the person who then is handed the chick and puts the chick in the travel box for the banding and blood collection. Quite the process the first time I saw it happen in 2004, and I have experienced firsthand the defensive strike of this adult female. Many people may call the bird some nasty names, but she is just doing her job as a breeding falcon. Granted, I don’t necessarily fully appreciate the behavior during the banding, but I can understand it.

This year we banded three very healthy chicks -- two females and a little male about 16-18 days old. The chicks were old enough to band and guess their sex, but nowhere near having the same defensive abilities of the Mayo chicks.

To date, the banding season is going well. We have banded 14 chicks at 4 different sites, and have many more to do. Next week is our busiest week of the season, looking at banding at 10 different sites. Several of the territories are on the North Shore of Lake Superior, where we often do not know what the production may be. Come back soon to see how our season is progressing. We are hoping for 60-70 chicks by the end of the summer.