A peregrine falcon has laid eggs in a nest atop the Kodak Building in Rochester, NY.
The rooftop nest is part of a program to protect this endangered species. Kodak has a videocam covering the nest with a live feed (well, refreshed every few minutes) to its website. Go here and see for yourself.
My sources tell me that the mom and dad birds take turns sitting on the eggs so you rarely see them together. The mom is called Mariah, and the dad is Kaver. Mariah has a little bit of white over her beak and Kaver doesn’t. That’s one way to tell them apart.
I happened to click on this morning when neither bird was there so I got to see the large eggs. Cool stuff.
Do you remember the peregrine falcons in downtown Denver? I can’t remember where they nested, though.
Gotta love Google!
In 1988 and 1989, ten peregrine chicks were hatched atop a skyscraper in downtown Denver, in hopes of establishing a pair of urban-dwelling peregrines which would feed on pigeons and other birds and nest amid the “urban canyons” of downtown high-rises. The program, sponsored by the Peregrine Partnership, a coalition of public and private groups including the DOW, also hoped to call attention to the plight of the peregrine and gather public support for recovery efforts. Last summer, a pair of unbanded peregrines visited downtown Denver but neither was from the Denver release. Though peregrines are occasionally seen downtown, there has been only one confirmed return sighting of any of the chicks released there- a young female who returned and defended the hack site, rendering it unfeasible to release birds there a third year. Craig isn’t surprised a population wasn’t established (it takes release of 15-20 chicks to produce one surviving adult) but he feels the downtown releases were successful in the amount of public support they generated.
Thanks for finding and posting that info, George. I too remembered the Denver birds in a vague sort of way. Now that I know it was 17 years ago, I think it’s great that either of us remembered anything at all.
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