Bird Cams Around the World

I am still stewing about all of this. Crimes, last night Sue and I watched Red Girl and CJ keeping a constant eye on Red and White. Two food drops were made during the time we were there, and at one point Red Girl was feeding little Red. I just cannot understand this at all. No sense going on and on, for what is done is done, but especially for Kim and those who helped her out last weekend, this is really tough. Does anyone know how many falcon nests are in Delaware? And I don't mean on bridges, either.

Susan - In response to your question of whether TriState would be open to receiving information about the numbers of birds returning to their birth place.....I don't that think that is the real issue for them. They are extremely busy now and need to keep birds moving. They probably don't want to give up flight cages and manpower when they can resort to a quick and easy resolution to the situation at hand. They may truly believe it is the correct thing to do for the birds.

Before I start, let me say many many thanks to everyone who provided so much information about hacking in general, the WVa site where the girls have gone, and the reasons for sending them. I have no wish to offend any of the persons involved in the decision, and hope that they are willing to accept our opinions and our reasons for them and take them into consideration in the future.

It's done, and can't be changed, so probably all I should say is that I hope with all my heart that the girls have a successful outcome in WVa and establish a new line of Harrisburg/Wilmington descendants in the New River Gorge.

But what I'm feeling and can't help but say is that I'm devastated. Hacking is an acceptable option for chicks that cannot be returned to their nest or fostered for some reason. It gives them a chance to return to life in the wild, and giving those chicks that chance improves the likelihood of restoring peregrine populations in places that populations haven't rebounded on their own. But restoring the chicks to their parents or placing them in a foster situation strikes me as vastly better options if they are available. I know city chicks face urban hazards and many of them don't make it. But they have the advantage of their own devoted parents teaching them how to fly safely in the city and how to hunt and catch prey, and to provide the odd feeding when a juvie isn't ready to fend for himself even if he should be. The lack of parental care after hacking has to counterbalance any advantage to getting them out of the city. And cliff collisions are just as likely and just as deadly as building collisions, aren't they? Only there are no dedicated watchers on the ground out there to pick up a fallen fledgling.

Plus, even though RG and CJ are first-timers, they have proven themselves more than up to the job. They are pushing the boys to fly and self-feed, but they are providing support to make sure they are successful. Every single flight last evening was attended by an adult. When Red Girl decided that Red Boy needed the nutrition more than he needed the lesson, she fed him, but not until he failed to eat by himself all day. There will be a day very, very soon when he wants to eat more than he wants to wait to be fed and he will learn he can do it himself. But in the meantime he will stay strong enough to continue to fly and learn. Because his parents are there for him.

I also think the argument that they can't have 4 young falcons imprint on Wilmington and come back to nest is pretty thin. Number one, no matter how well their training goes, it is virtually certain that 2 of the remaining 4 will not survive to reproductive maturity. It is very sad, but it is true. Simple statistics. Number two, as far as I know, Delaware has only 5 nesting pairs of peregrines. Granted it's a small state, but I have no doubt it can accommodate one or two more nests before they hang out the "No Vacancy" sign. Number three, from everything I've read, the male offspring are the ones that seek nesting locations closer to home, while the females generally disperse to locations farther away. So returning the females to the nest shouldn't increase the danger of future competition all that much. Number four, as Reenie mentioned, if this was seriously a problem, Harrisburg would be overrun with falcons. Instead, they have never had to fend off any returning offspring. As it stands, only 4 of the more than 3O fledglings who lived to leave the area (a 75% success rate, by the way - well above the national average) have ever been discovered at another nesting location at all. Of all the young that the former female raised with Caesar, only CJ returned to the area, and not until both parents were dead. Number five, if there was really a problem, shouldn't they be taking most of the young from every nest every year to keep them from returning and overrunning their natal location?

It may be a small thing, moving a few chicks from Point A, where someone perceives a surplus, to Point B where someone perceives a deficit. But putting them at Point B is no guarantee that the deficit will be filled. If there wasn't a problem at Point B, wouldn't the population have rebounded naturally? PA abandoned hacking to cliffs because it turned out that virtually all falcon fledglings hacked to "natural" cliff sites fell victim to Great Horned Owl predation. I would have to guess that WVa's GHOs are just as eager to eat fledgling falcons as PA's are. And straight out of the box, those juicy little snacklets are just about defenseless against them without a parent to run off intruders. So are we really supposed to cheer because our girls are less likely to face windows and buildings but they are a hundred times more likely to become owl food?

We have got ourselves into the morass of a global environmental crisis in large part because of our insistence on managing nature for our own convenience instead of letting nature be. I know that the scientific community is more concerned with the overall success of the falcon population as a whole than with the survival of individual falcons, so from that perspective I guess the decision makes sense. But you have to at least consider the idea that thinking that way is part of the reason we have a global environmental crisis in the first place. Considering how much stuff we used to think of as absolute (Health benefits of cocaine? Tomatoes poisonous? DDT a miracle chemical?), and how much of that knowledge turned out to be wrong - some of it catastrophically, you have to at least consider the idea that we don't necessarily know best.

I sincerely hope and believe that the decision to send the girls away was made with good intentions, but with all due respect to the parties involved, I think it was a poor decision nonetheless. I think the girls would stand a better long-term chance of survival if they had been returned to their own parents. And I think that taking them away from willing and capable parents and placing them in a situation with at its unlikely best no better chance for survival, is meddling with Nature in all the wrong ways for all the wrong reasons.

End of rant. Now I'll be good and just quietly hope this doesn't happen again.

Edit: I started this right after Kim posted that the transfer had already happened, so didn't see everyone else's contributions. Amen to everyone!

Susan E. - My comment about TriState finding a quick and easy resolution was my opinion only.

I think I could scrape up a bit to contribute to that cause as well, Susan!

Here is the link to my photobucket album from Tuesday's trip to Wilmington to Falcon Watch.



Halfway through the day I discovered that a lot of the pics I took (over 400 of them) had been overexposed to the point of showing nothing but white screen. I don't know what happened, but in any case, I had to delete a LOT of pictures. I'm afraid that most of CJ's flying pics were in that group, so the majority of adult flying pics in this album are of Red Girl. The slight was unintentional and I'm sure I'll get good pics of him on a future trip. This was the first time I saw CJ in person - he is one GORGEOUS bird!!!

Westwindschild, I also think your post was very well articulated & well thought out.

Kitten, thanks for the article on the hack box at New River Gorge.

I would also love to contribute if it were possible to get the girls back home.

One other point I thought of as an advantage to keeping the chicks with their parents is what if one is injured & has a temporary disability causing them to be unable to catch their own prey? I know of 2 examples of that happening & the parents brought prey to the chicks, both girls, until they were able to fend for themselves. Both disabilities were a broken leg. One of these girls is Polly who hatched in Montreal. She stayed with her parents for her first year, was able by then to fend for herself, although her leg healed at an odd angle. She now has a nest of her own. The other chick is Solo in Australia, who we worried wouldn't survive without the use of her leg. The last we heard of her, she didn't appear to know that she had a disability.

First, Sue you said IT ALL and so eloquently. My heart and tears go out to KIM and ALL of US who have had PERSONAL following of these Birds for YEARS. I am disappointed that Tri-State and others involved could not see that these TWO were well fed and in Great condition. THEIR PARENTS DID THAT! They were ready for flying lessons from RG and CJ. That is a lot of "bull" about having too many to take care of. Harrisburg's Mom and Lil Dad have done it for YEARS!!! Red GIRL was one of them, for heaven's sake!!!

Oh my GOODNESS, I hope they never do this again!!!!!!!

They should be more educated by looking at this Forum that has ALL the
"up to minute happenings as they happen!"

AMEN TO EVERY WORD REENIE!!!!!!

Sue, your comments were absolutely right on. Wish that post could be submitted to TriSate. And I too would be willing to foot part of the cost to get the girls back to Wilmington, but I don't think there's a prayer of that happening. It hit me this morning that CJ has returned to his birthplace after being heaven only knows where. We've never had one of the Harrisburg young show up on the nest ledge after an extended time. Last year our White Boy showed up in August after being away from the ledge for a while, but to my knowledge he hasn't been back since. Now to look at Sue's pictures.

I want to say that what Westwindschild has stated so eloquently, is exactly how our biologists here think.

A prematurely fledging falcon should always be returned to its nest or close by and if this ,for some reason is not possible, they foster it to another nest.
Hacking is done for falcons that have never fledged and do not have a nest site.( and from what I have read it is done when they are 3 to 5 weeks old) Brought to the sites and fed until they are of an age to fledge. Which by the way is usually later than when they actually fledge. This is monitored , by humans, either with cams or from a distance.

Here if a nest has more offspring than the parents can provide , they will foster one of chicks at banding to another nest . But we all know that Red girl and CJ were providing enough food.

Even though there are the dangers of the city ,as was stated, they fall to predators in the wild(great horned owl)

Everyone would dearly love to have all falcons in places like Cobbs Island etc, but is there ample food to provide for all these hacked falocns(in the wild) , Remember , one of the reasons the falcons came to the state they were in, not only affected them but also a lot of their prey.

I am so afraid that some of these decisions will come back to bite them in the butt(so to speak)

I am not a trained biologist but this decision was wrong.

Now I will bow out. It would be nice to see the decision reversed but we all knwo where that is going to go.

Sue, I just finished looking at your pics....they are just wonderful. some of the aerial shots are just spectacular...there are a few where the underside of the wings/body really pick up the rosy effects of the sun...just gorgeous...thanks so much for uploading them and posting for all of us to see!!!