In the still of early morning,
His bugle cry rang out
As launching upwards from his perch
He gave a raucous shout.
A flash, a glimpse, and he was gone
Over the station roof. 
In seconds he was back, though,
Carrying the proof
Of his devotion to the downy chicks
Shrilling calls of urgent need
Half orphaned but well parented
He met their every need.

In the golden light of evening
He streaked across the sky
A poem dressed in feathers,
Like lightning flashing by.
Swooping low, soaring high,
Wheeling left and right
Then racing straight upside the wall
Ever up, ‘til out of sight. 
Displaying unmatched flight skill
To attract a new young mate
He danced the sky and brought her gifts
To show his worth so great.

On a quiet Sunday afternoon
His calling rent the air.
A battle cry, a warning
His home he would not share.
And fiercely he defended
His home, his chicks, his nest. 
With all his skill he fought until
He proved himself the best.
Then landed on the point and
Casually began to preen.
Brought every single feather
To a perfect healthy sheen. 

For sixteen years he ruled the sky
Above this river town.
But it’s little things that come to mind
When I think about him now
Presenting prey so eagerly
When the first egg was barely pipped
Poised atop the steeple, 
For a moonrise silhouette 
Playing tag above our heads 
With a pair of fledgling lads
An extraordinary falcon 
Our beloved Little Dad.

“C’mon,” I coaxed. “Just budge over half an inch so I can get a picture of you.”

But the Golden-crowned Kinglet, intent on its pursuit of food, ignored my half-whispered plea as I crouched with my camera before my eye, finger poised lightly on the shutter button. Suddenly, a brilliant golden flash passed across the viewfinder’s field between me and my target. Warbler! flashed through my mind only half a nanosecond later.  Could that have been a Common Yellowthroat? I asked myself, trying to think of other birds that might have such an intensely yellow underside. I looked away from the camera and into the brush just in time to see a yellow undertail disappear around a pile of logs several feet away and to my right. Definitely a warbler!

I was at the Borough of Highspire’s Reservoir Park on November 22, 2013, filling the wait for a prescription with what I had planned to be a half hour of watching ducks on the lake. But the Golden-crowned Kinglet had lured me onto the trail, and now, with my prescription and the Kinglet entirely forgotten, I strained to hear or see where the mystery warbler had gone.  At that moment I sincerely wished I had brought along my Stokes Guide to Warblers, which includes undertail diagrams for every warbler, so I could check which warblers were yellow all the way to the back. But in lieu of that, I determined that I was NOT leaving the park without a usable photo for identification, or at least a careful visual study of field marks. Because, whatever it was, that glimpse of undertail told me that it most definitely did not belong in PA at the end of November!

Suddenly I heard a chip and spotted a flash of bright yellow half hidden behind tangled leaves and vines on a branch a few inches above the top of the log pile. I pulled the camera back up and checked the settings to be ready if it moved out into the open. But instead it darted across a few feet of open air and under more vegetation at the base of a nearby tree, so fast it was gone before I could twitch my finger on the shutter. But I could see its movement as it hopped along under a row of low brush, so I waited. Eventually it popped out into the open and paused, looking around. I squeezed off half a dozen shots with the camera then pulled up my binoculars to get a good look. It was not a Common Yellowthroat! But I was not sure what kind of warbler it was.

It was a tiny bird, with a blue-gray head and throat, olive-y brown back and wings, brilliant yellow breast and belly. It had white arcs above and below the eye, pink legs and a long tail. It continued foraging along the ground, constantly chipping as it hopped about; even after it ducked back under cover, I could hear its chip note as it moved farther from the trail. It was not a bird I had seen before, and didn’t quite match any of the warbler pictures in my Sibley field guide. But my experience has been that the birds I see do not always exactly match the field guide illustrations, and that fall warbler plumages offer even more variation than breeding plumages, so I tried to figure out which of the several similar possibilities was the closest and most likely.  The blue-gray head and yellow underside quickly reduced the possibilities to a very few birds, and of the options available, I settled on “maybe a Nashville”.

When I posted a few shots to Facebook an hour later, it took less than a minute for someone to point out that it was NOT a Nashville, but it looked like a Mourning warbler. I remembered that Mourning was one of the options I had considered, and checked my pics against a few images that came up when I googled “Mourning Warbler”. Some of them looked pretty close, and although the Mourning Warbler did not have the eye arcs clearly seen on my pictures, the Nashville did not have a grayish throat. So I put a link to my photos along with a revised ID on the PABIRDS listserv and within a very few minutes received half a dozen responses, including Alex Lamoreaux’s suggestion that instead of a Mourning Warbler, it might be a MacGillivray’s Warbler, the Mourning Warbler’s Western counterpart. I had not even considered MacGillivray’s because it is a Western bird. Alex explained that because Mourning Warblers leave our area very early, migrating to their wintering grounds in late summer, it was actually more likely to be an extremely rare Western vagrant than a local bird getting a late start on migration. And a phenomenon began!

Shortly after Superstorm Sandy hit in 2012, I began to see an unfamiliar warbler around the Reservoir. Unfortunately, I was unable to get a usable photo, and it was mid-December before I even got good enough looks at it to come up with a tentative ID of Tennessee Warbler. And that ID was only because I could not find any distinguishing field marks that would clearly identify it as something else. I didn’t have enough confidence to share on the PABIRDS listserv, although I did mention in an eBird report that I had been seeing a warbler at the Reservoir that I could not identify. On January 1, nearly 2 months after my first sighting of it, my friend Renee Larry shot a photograph of a small yellowish bird perched atop some shrubbery while we were walking the trail together, even though she didn’t know what it was and I didn’t notice it at all. But when she posted it to Facebook, I immediately recognized it as my mystery bird. Finally there was a photographic record of the bird, so I sent a request for ID help to Andy McGann. It wasn’t until Andy replied that he and Tom Johnson believed it was a Tennessee Warbler that I posted the sighting on PABIRDS. And by then, it was too late. Even though several birders came to Highspire to try for it, the warbler was not seen again. As far as I know, Renee and I were the only two people who ever saw the (possible) Tennessee Warbler at Highspire. I didn’t want that to happen again. So I was very glad when Dick Williams posted an account of his sighting of the MacGillivray’s later in the afternoon of the 22^nd.

November 23^rd was a Saturday. When I arrived at the park around 8:45, I was amazed to see more than a dozen cars in the parking lot, and lots of people with cameras, binoculars and even spotting scopes.  I was glad to see a few people I recognized – Annette Mathes, Ramsay Koury, Mike Epler, Dave McNaughton, and Ian Gardner –  in the crowd at the first big bend in the trail. The bird had been seen and heard a little while earlier, but had been silent for some minutes when I arrived.  It was close to half an hour before he appeared again, by which time the crowd had grown by half.  It was very exciting to be part of what felt like a big event. Yesterday’s sighting had been a completely unexpected treat. Today there were serious expectations in the air. Everyone spoke in hushed voices, attempted to move along the gravel trail as soundlessly as possible, and all attention was focused on one thing: a tiny bird thousands of miles from where it belonged, unseen but a palpable presence, moving about in the brushy vegetation looking for bugs to eat.

Whenever the bird showed itself, however briefly, the clicking of camera shutters sounded all around me. Fortunately, it did not appear to disturb the bird, as it gave several opportunities for good long looks at it. When I got a chance to meet and speak with Alex, he told me that based on his observations he was convinced it was a MacGillivray’s.  By this time, I had done a little more reading on the MacGillivray’s Warbler, and I could see for myself the distinctions he pointed out that argued for MacGillivray’s as the proper ID. He explained that there had already been a lot of discussion amongst numerous warbler experts and that with the wealth of observations, photographs and particularly with the video recordings that would hopefully have a clear audio record of its chip sounds, it would almost certainly be confirmed as a Mac. Within a few days, a consensus was reached that the bird was in fact an immature male MacGillivray’s Warbler, the 2^nd ever in PA, and the first for Dauphin County

The MacGillivray’s Warbler (Geothlypis tolmiei) is a small bird, ranging from 3.9-5.9”, with a wingspan of about 7.5”; it weighs between 0.3-0.5 ounces¹.  MacGillivray’s warblers breed throughout western North America from southern Alaska and much of western Canada, across the Pacific Northwest of the United States, east into Montana, south to southern California and central New Mexico and along much of the length of the Rocky Mountains. The fall migration route seems to be little understood, due to the bird’s secretive behavior, however, the primary fall migration route appears to run south between the West coast and the Rocky Mountains. In this range, MacGillivray’s Warblers are routinely observed on their southward migration all through the first half of November. They winter in Mexico, Central American and northern South America.

So, how did one end up in Highspire, PA? My theory is that the same massive storm system that spawned a devastating outbreak of tornadoes in Illinois on November 17 also delivered our vagrant warbler. That storm had its roots in a system that formed nearly a week earlier along the California coast, at a time when autumn’s northern migrants would be passing through the area, and proceeded from there southwestwards across the Rockies and toward the Gulf of Mexico, where it collided with another system before rampaging north and east until it finally petered out early on November 20, here in southcentral PA. This storm ultimately covered much of the US from the Great Plains eastwards across the Appalachians, and from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes². A migrant caught up in the storm could therefore have been carried east from the southern Rockies, then north up the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys to Pennsylvania, where it could have continued to ride the storm eastward until it was deposited in Highspire sometime between 11/19-20.  Just speculation, of course; there’s no way to know for sure. All I do know is that around 11:30 on the morning of November 22, he flashed into my life and captured my attention for the duration of his stay.

Word of the visiting MacGillivray’s spread rapidly via birding listservs and Facebook pages. Over the seventeen days of sightings, visitors from all across Pennsylvania as well as New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware and New York travelled to Highspire hoping to get a look. The majority of these guests were not disappointed. I was excited to meet many of them myself, and be able to see their excitement when they first spotted the Mac. After a few days it occurred to me to try to compile a list of Mac visitors. Between the people I met in person, email acknowledgments from many others, and people who posted their own photos/sighting accounts of the bird on Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, etc., nearly 200 people that I know of came to Highspire and saw the Mac during his stay.

The Mac quickly established a pattern of behavior, foraging on either side of the nature trail from the northeastern corner of the old reservoir westward to a point midway along the third stretch of boardwalk on the trail. Maybe a quarter mile in walking terms, and somewhat less as the bird flies, he made his way from one end of “his” territory to the other several times a day. Abundant low-growing vines offered excellent cover and plenty of insect life for him to eat. He foraged right beside the trail or at a short distance, with little or no regard for the proximity of his audience. On one occasion he flew from a clump of tall grasses some 6 or 7 feet lower than the boardwalk to a hanging vine behind me, flying right by my face, less than 2 feet from me. Of all the exciting moments, that might have been the top for me! He was observed bathing in several places where water pools up or runs in to the reservoir. He was frequently seen in close proximity to other foraging birds. He generally ignored the Carolina and winter wrens, song sparrows, golden- and ruby-crowned kinglets but there were several yellow-rumped warblers that he would give chase to if they approached too close.

For seventeen days, he delighted visitors to the nature trail with his colorful presence and near-constant chipping commentary. Then he vanished as suddenly as he had appeared. I last saw him on December 7, and Dave McNaughton reported that he and several other birders enjoyed watching him on December 8. A winter storm the next day deposited 1-2 inches of snow on Highspire. Tom Johnson and a friend observed and photographed him in the snow on Dec. 9. After the snow it was a day or two before I could get over to the park, and when I did, I could not find any sign of him. He has not been seen since. I still listen and watch for him every time I walk the trail, although by this point I don’t expect to see him again.

Where he came from, how he got here, why he left, where he went – the questions will remain unanswered. That’s okay. I don’t need to know everything. What I do know is that one tiny wanderer brought color and excitement to a dreary end-of-autumn for me and much of the area’s birding community.  For seventeen days.

¹ http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/MacGillivrays_Warbler/lifehistory

² http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ind/?n=nov172013outbreak

Falcon

I am an egg.

My shell, a tiny universe, all my own.

My time measured by the steady whooshing sounds of Mother’s heart above me, and sometimes by the sound of her voice, chupping softly as she turns me over. It is the most beautiful sound I know, her voice.

I am growing.

In the warm darkness under Mother’s soft breast, I am cramped inside my shell.

As I flex my tiny legs and wings, and listen to the soft “whoosh-whoosh” above, I hear new sounds; three unique whooshing heartbeats, so close by. Just beyond the me-verse of my shell.  They call to me, those heartbeats. “Fly with me”, they say.  Fly?

I am hatching.

It is outgrown , my shell.

I beat at it from within. “Let me out! There’s no room in here for me!”  Wet, cold, and exhausted, I leave its fragments behind and tumble into a world huge beyond my imagination. Warm breath blows on me; big yellow beak and shiny eyes come near, touch me, roll me under warm feathery breast. “Whoosh-whoosh”. It’s mother. I am safe. I sleep.

I am a nestling.

My scrape, an exciting  new world of sounds, colors, tastes, holds three downy white chicks – my hatchmates. They look almost just like me.

My days are sleeping, eating, snuggling with my siblings, poking my head out to see past Mother’s (or Father’s) wings. And still, the most beautiful thing I know is Mother’s voice as she chups at us, to eat, to behave, to settle down to sleep now. When I hear her, I know I am safe.

I am changing.

The scrape is too small for four brave explorers! There is a whole ledge to run and play on. Is it really only two weeks ago that I could barely hold my head up? I was so tiny! I’m a giant now – bigger than Father, almost as big as Mother.  My down is warm and cozy now that I am big, but what are these little brown stubby things poking out of my skin? They itch!

I am impatient.

I run along the ledge, leaping and flapping all day. There is a whole world of sky out there. I want to fly with Mother and Father! I want to chase the birds out of the air and eat whole pigeons by myself! I’m so hungry, I can’t wait for beak-feeding, and I need too much food to share with my siblings. I mantle prey to show I’m a grown-up and I can feed myself. But these feathers are so hard to pull out. Where is the tasty, bloody flesh under all this skin? Mom! Show me how you do this!

Look at my feathers! Look at my wings! I can fly, I know I can! And yet…the ledge beneath my feet feels right.  I will fly, I will! But can I keep the ledge under me when I try?

I am ready.

The sky is calling me.  I can hear it call. I want to fly out to greet it. Oh! This breeze tastes nice! I wonder how it would feel beneath my wings? Maybe if I just stretch out a little bit…

I’m flying! I’m soaring! I’m king of the sky!

I am a fledgling.

I fly all day, playing with my siblings, learning how to climb, how to stoop, how to use the air to take me where I want to go. I am learning to catch prey, but all I’ve caught so far is a dragonfly. It was crunchy. Sometimes I fly so high, I can see way out beyond my little space. The world is so much bigger than I ever knew! I want to see it – all of it. But there is a turkey vulture flying too close. I scurry back to a safe ledge and watch Mother and Father chase it away. I will do that too. Someday.

I am grown up.

I left the nest; it seems so long ago, now. I have flown down rivers, over mountains, past cities and farms. I have watched the waves on Atlantic beaches, and hunkered down through winter snows. I have followed the wind wherever it led me, and now here I am. This place looks good.  There are birds to chase; trees to perch in, a stream to splash in, and a good ledge to scrape in. I feel like flying so high!

What is that? A flash of feathers, faster than lightning! A shiny eye turns my way, then she is off. Wait! I want to fly with you! Here, I will bring you a fat cuckoo, I will bring you dozens of cuckoos! You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Fly with me!

I am a falcon. And now I am home.

by Sue Hannon, June 30, 2013

I have an Excel spreadsheet that I use to track whatever information I can find about the Harrisburg falcons, and any nests that one of the Harrisburg offspring is found at. Since I only learned of them in 2005, I I have had difficulty tracking down information from previous years, so my spreadsheet is not quite comprehensive. But now that there are 6 Harrisburg fledges out there successfully nesting elsewhere, I thought a summation of what I do know might be appropriate.

Since the nest ledge at the Rachel Carson building was first occupied in 1997:
Number of resident males: 2
Number of resident females: 4
Number of eggs laid: 61
Number of eggs hatched: 51
Number of male offspring: 20
Heaviest male:* 690 g  (2 chicks tied: Lil Man and White 2010) incomplete info
Lightest male:* 485 g   (Yellow 2007)  incomplete info
Number of female offspring: 30
Heaviest female:* 990 g  (Red 2013)  incomplete info
Lightest female:* 550 g  (Red 2007)  incomplete info
Number of undetermined sex: 1  (Silver 2006, 500 g)
Number of birds fledged: 49
Number of birds rescued:* 27   incomplete info
Number of overall rescues:* 38  (19 x 1, 5 x 2, 3 x 3) incomplete info
Number of offspring dispersed: 33 (does not include this year’s 4, as they have not yet dispersed)
Number of offspring known deceased: 16 (includes fledglings that vanished without a trace shortly after fledging)
Of known deceased, 12 died during nestling or fledgling phase, 2 vanished without a trace within days after fledging, and 2 died after dispersal but during first year of life.
Offspring with nests: 6

Number of chicks produced so far at offspring nests*:   68  (Yellow Boy 2005: 23; Yellow Girl 2006: 15*; Red Girl 2008: 13; Green Girl 2009: 7; Blue Girl 2009: 7; Silver Boy 2011: 3)

*Incomplete information

Have you ever heard the phrase “knocked halfway to next week”? That seems to be just what happened to one of the Harrisburg Peregrine Falcon fledglings several days ago. Please keep in mind that no accident was witnessed, no visible injury could be confirmed, and the bird never came to ground so she could be examined, so everything I relate here is based on speculation, guesswork, and observation after the fact, but I believe the observed behavior provides sufficient evidence to make a pretty good guess.

Early Wednesday morning, the female fledgling  we call White Girl (for the color coded white tape on one of her leg bands) was found in a small open-roofed atrium on an upper floor of Harrisburg University. The presence nearby of a decapitated prey bird probably explains her presence there – she flew in pursuing a dropped food transfer, and once in, was unable to gain enough height to get back out into open air. She was rescued from the atrium, examined for signs of illness or injury, and with none found, she was released to the roof of the Carson Building. This was White Girl’s 3rd rescue since fledging, a statistic that is not necessarily significant, but not necessarily insignificant either. Also not necessarily significant: White Girl is quite a large young female, being the 2^nd heaviest the Harrisburg nest has ever produced, but she developed her feathers much slower than her three siblings, continuing to show large patches of down more than a week after the other three were essentially down-free, and still showing the occasional tuft another week after that. With that said, it is my understanding that she was alert, strong and very feisty during the rescue and exam, and upon release immediately flew up over 333 Market Street, the tallest building in the area, where she was observed engaging in typically exuberant juvenile flight behavior for several moments before moving out of sight.

White Girl was next seen less than an hour later, on the nest ledge.  The sun’s glare from mid-morning to early afternoon often makes close observation of an individual bird via the webcam a bit of a challenge , but over the next hours, something about her attitude and posture did not seem quite right to longtime falcon observer, Reenie Larry. Reenie brought her concerns to the attention of DEP’s Environmental Education Regional Program Coordinator Ann Devine, who zoomed the camera to focus closely on White Girl for a few minutes at a time several times over the next hour or so. Zooming in did not reveal any injury, but it also seemed clear that White Girl was not entirely OK. She was listless and lethargic, seemingly unable to keep her eyes open, ignoring nearby scraps from previous food drops at the ledge in spite of showing an empty crop, and presenting a generally disheveled appearance – messy beak, hunched posture and ruffled feathers, a few of them sticking out at odd angles. And most alarming of all, she was silent. White Girl is the screamer of this year’s hatch, and the absence of her most distinctive voice seemed to shout out “something’s wrong!”  It seemed unlikely that an illness could account for her appearance and behavior when she had been obviously hale and hearty only hours before. A far more likely explanation came to mind – White Girl was suffering the after-effects of a collision, most likely with a downtown building.

During fledging, young peregrines tend to crash into buildings, sometimes repeatedly. While a collision with a building always carries the potential for serious injury, at this early stage of flight these impacts usually look worse than they are; brand new flyers do not have enough wing strength or flight skill to achieve super high speeds, and most of these collisions occur during a failed landing attempt, usually with a feet-first approach that protects the bird from catastrophic head, neck and/or wing injuries. The experience does serve to teach them to keep a respectful distance from walls, but like youngsters of any species, young falcons don’t always remember to pay attention to their surroundings.

Three weeks into flying, a collision with a building is an entirely different matter. Flight at this point can be quite powerful and a fairly high speed, and most of these impacts are due to mistaking a window reflection for open air, miscalculation during a flight maneuver, or simple inattention to surroundings. As a result, these collisions are often nearly at full speed and head first, and sadly, many fledglings do not survive these encounters. Already this year, collisions have claimed a number of young falcons, including Pittsburgh’s Silver Boy, the sole chick from the Cathedral of Learning nest.  Fortunately, White Girl had avoided this fate, but she certainly seemed to have addled herself.  For this reason, Harrisburg’s Fledge Watch (in the form of Jane Barnette, Reenie Larry, and myself), reconvened for several days to keep an eye on her.

Initially, White Girl was very lethargic. She spent most of the first eight hours with eyes closed, inattentive to the activity around her.  When the adult male brought a small prey to the ledge around 6 PM, landing with it right by White Girl, she finally showed some interest and got to her feet. Too slow, however; her brother darted over from the other end of the ledge, snatched the prey and launched into the air with it. White Girl screamed and threw herself off the ledge after him, but had no chance of catching up to him. It was immediately apparent that she was in trouble; she turned back, but was unable to regain the ledge, striking the wall a good three feet too low, and dropping several more before recovering herself and flying out to try for a different landing spot. Her wingstrokes were clumsy and labored, she failed to gain the roof of the University, and made a second attempt for the nest ledge. On this attempt, she just barely gained the necessary height and made a safe, but highly inelegant belly landing at the edge of the ledge, where she remained, motionless, with one wing drooping over the edge and mostly with eyes closed again, for the next hour.

With the sun behind the building, the air cooled by several degrees, and when Red Girl settled next to her, she perked up a bit and responded to Red Girl’s beaking. Around 8 PM, the adult male again brought prey to White Girl on the ledge. Red and White both worked over the prey for a few minutes, and we had time to identify some of the feathers that floated down to us as belonging to a Red-bellied Woodpecker before Red Girl took the prey and flew to the roof of the University with it. White Girl screamed where she sat for several minutes before once again taking wing in pursuit of a meal. This time, she flew somewhat better, although still laboring harder than she should, and made a respectable landing right beside her sister, who she continued to scream at for a moment before moving to partake of the now defeathered prey. It was impossible to see how much she ate, but it was only a moment or two before she settled down to “pancake” on the roof, and when Red Girl carried the rest of the prey to a point about 15 feet along the ledge, she made no move to follow her. Nor did she react when the third female fledgling, Blue Girl, joined them on the roof and helped herself to what was left of the meal.

Shortly before 9 PM, White Girl moved to join the other two at the corner of the roof, but within moments, first Red Girl, then Blue Girl returned to the nest ledge, leaving White Girl alone again. It was fully night now, but we were still able to see quite clearly as White Girl stood up, stretched her wings, bobbed her head three or four times, then leaned forward into the air and flew home, making a smooth landing on her feet near the middle of the ledge.

We were very encouraged to see these last two flights, but felt that White Girl still bore watching. The flights had been steady, but hardly what you would expect from a fledgling with nearly three weeks of flying time under her wings. And it was unclear if she had been able to get more than a mouthful of food from the woodpecker the adult had brought her. Thursday morning seemed to confirm that she was still not out of the woods.

Early Thursday morning, White Girl was more herself – perching on the stick, occasionally scratching with one foot, and looking around a bit – but again, she just didn’t seem entirely right. Around 5:40 AM, she jumped, along with Red Girl, from the stick to the top of the scrape shield, a favorite perching spot for juvies. She perched there a few moments, then either got bumped or jumped down of her own accord. Two minutes later, she jumped up again, but did not gain half the needed height and settled back to the stick instead, where she sat without looking around or much other movement for some time. Later in the morning, she made several flights, and flew well, but she continued to return to the ledge for frequent rests instead of spending the day in the air, at play with her siblings. She was clearly in better shape and more alert than the previous day, but also clearly not entirely back to normal. In the early afternoon, closeup photos showed that her beak was sticky with what looked like blood and covered with feathers, down, and other bits of unidentifiable material; it was impossible to tell if there was a wound on the beak or if she just hadn’t bothered to clean her beak after attempting to eat. In either case, a messy beak like that is not something you expect to see on a healthy falcon – they usually scrape their beak against something to clean it after eating. And most worrying of all, when the adult female brought in yet another prey item to White Girl on the ledge (instead of making her fly to catch a mid-air food transfer), White appeared to have difficulty with both defeathering the bird and swallowing the meat.

By this point, we were worn out with the roller coaster of worry, hope, worry, hope, worry! We were also very concerned about the best way to proceed.  If White Girl was in fact recovering from an impact trauma and did in fact have no significant injury, watchful waiting was clearly the appropriate course of action. On the other hand, if the collision had left her with a wing muscle injury – even a slight one, her continued efforts to fly might aggravate the injury and not getting her to medical treatment could leave her with a permanent impairment that would jeopardize her ability to survive in the wild. If the messy beak was sticky with blood from a wound, it might heal on its own, but it also might not, and leaving it untreated could similarly jeopardize her ability to survive in the wild. We waited for her to fly, torn between hoping to see her grounded so she could be properly examined and hoping she would fly well enough to reassure us that she was on the mend.

She did not come to ground. For several more hours, she did not fly either. By early evening, close to 36 hours had passed since White Girl’s apparent mishap. Technically, not quite halfway to next week, but it seemed that White Girl was catching up to herself at last. She appeared to have finally cleared the cobwebs from her head and was wide awake, vocalizing and interacting with her siblings who had all put in an appearance at the ledge. I arrived around 7:20 PM for a late evening watch, by which point she’d had a good meal that she had eaten with no apparent difficulty, alleviating the worries about her beak. All that remained was to see a good strong flight. Which she gave us right on cue, at 7:40. She had been perched on the stick, preening, when without any preliminaries, she leaped into the air and flew. Really flew. Strong, fast, and high, skirting close to the wall of 333 Market and riding the air current straight up to the top. Round about, chasing another juvie and then a third, reveling in the wind under her beautiful, strong, perfect wings, totally oblivious to the cheers ringing out from four throats 200 feet below her! The aerobatics moved out of sight for a few minutes before one by one the three juvies returned into view. Impossible at this point to tell which of the females was White Girl, one settled on the roof of the University, the other on top of the round column that overlooks the nest ledge, while the male once again took up a position on the slatted louvers at the back of 333 Market, a favorite perching spot for the adult male, also. Before long, Column Girl (based on size, I think Red Girl) circled down to the ledge, rejoining the sister (most likely Blue Girl) who had remained behind, and University Girl (again, judging size, most likely White Girl) posed on the very corner of the U’s roof, beautifully silhouetted against the pink glow of sunset. As the sky shifted from pink to orange and finally fading to a deep violet, the silhouetted falcon shifted positions, briefly stretching out her wings then pancaking flat and going to sleep.  The last moon of Spring hung overhead, and the dome of the Capitol, topped with its golden statue, Commonwealth, glittered with lights straight up Fourth Street as we returned to our cars, happy to know that scattered around the block and 100 feet above us, four healthy little falcons were settled in for the night. With much lighter hearts, we also headed home, where a deep and restful sleep, untroubled by worry for White Girl, was waiting.

The four juvenile peregrine falcons at Harrisburg have all fledged, and the Fledgling Watch has concluded. All four have successfully returned to the nest ledge (not to mention higher landing spots) without assistance and are flying strongly.

The yellow-banded male fledged at 8:06 am on Friday — and returned to the nest ledge unassisted exactly 4 minutes later, smashing the old record for ledge return by about 25 minutes. The first rescue of the season occurred after his second flight, about an hour later, when he became “boxed in” after landing in the balcony enclosure directly above the nest ledge. 

The white-banded female fledged about 6:30 Friday evening, to the upper ledge on the University building next door to Carson Building after a short flight and minor collision with the wall above that ledge. She spent the next 24 hours there before her next attempt at flight. The first of the females to fledge, she also became the first of them to return to the nest ledge sometime on Sunday.

The remaining two females, blue-banded and red-banded, fledged very early Saturday morning, at 5:55 and 6:35 respectively, and both fledglings eventually landed on a 5-story apartment building across the street after somewhat rocky first flights. The blue-banded female rested on the apartment building roof for several hours before making an excellent flight to the roof of a 9-story government office building 3 blocks away, then flying to the ledge of the University to join her white-banded sister. Around 7:30 Saturday evening she flew again, repeatedly trying to get back to the nest ledge and losing height with each attempt, until she came to ground in an alley across the street from the Carson Building. She was uninjured, but showed evidence of dehydration, so she was taken to Red Creek Wildlife Center for fluids and 24-hours of observation. She returned to the Carson Building on Monday, and within a very few minutes of her release, she had flown and landed on top of 333 Market Street, the tallest building around.

The red-banded female (at 990 grams on banding day, the heaviest chick Harrisburg has ever produced) had the most difficulty gaining height in flight. After resting for several hours on a small perch near the roof of the apartment building, she led the Watch crew on a 3-hour tour of the lower rooftops in the alley between Market and Chestnut Streets before finally making her way across Market Street, then back, and finally landing on the roof of the same apartment building where she started – only about 6 feet higher than her original perch there. Her “adventure” was exhausting to follow on foot, but incredibly interesting. I have never seen such a demonstration of using failure as a stepping-stone to success. At each stop, she took the lesson learned from that flight and adjusted her approach for the next flight. From rooftop to rooftop, she made small gains in height or achieved a better line of sight toward home. There was only one occasion when, upon failing to get high enough for her selected landing target, she bumped into a wall and dropped to a lower rooftop. From that point, she approached each new (and higher) target on an arc, so that she could drop down to land, or she circled away and returned to the last starting point to regroup. It took her until the next day to gain enough height to join her siblings on University ledge, but by that point, not only had all her short flights helped her build up the necessary wing strength for successful flying, she was also well-versed in making in-flight adjustments and identifying more achievable secondary landing targets.

Her experience made an interesting contrast to what happened with the male fledgling on Sunday evening. Lightweight and agile, Yellow-band flew easily and strongly for the first few days. However, as the temperature and humidity dropped sharply late Sunday, he began to have difficulty gaining the height he was accustomed to. His efforts to reach the top of 333 Market, the Carson building, and the University were unsuccessful, his wing strokes showed a lot of wasted energy and he began to struggle to remain aloft. He did not adjust his goals downward until he had become too fatigued to reach even lower perches. Eventually he landed on his lowest perch ever – a post at the top of the Chestnut Street Parking Garage, where he was able to rest and recover for a few minutes. He did not immediately learn from his experience; it took another long series of unsuccessful attempts at high targets in the gathering darkness (that must have been frustrating and confusing for him, and was certainly upsetting for us to watch). Unlike the red-banded female, he had not learned how to fail, and after several days of zipping about wherever he wanted to go, he had become overconfident. He had to fail repeatedly before he learned the lesson.

This is one of the concerns we have as watchers when a young male is so successful at first. Good judgment comes from experience, and the lessons learned by making mistakes are valuable experience — as long as the young peregrine survives them. When new fledglings collide with walls or windows on their first few flights, they are generally not flying fast enough or with enough force to cause themselves harm. By the time they can fly with that kind of speed or force, they have learned by experience how to avoid walls and windows. The youngster that doesn’t make those mistakes at first also doesn’t get the benefit of learning from them, and by the time he does make a serious mistake, the potential for serious harm is much higher.

Fortunately, this time, it seems that the lesson was learned. He finally managed a landing on the church steeple, where he spent Sunday night. Monday morning, his strength fully recovered, he resumed apparently effortless flight, accompanied by the adult female, who began his instruction in the finer points of riding the skies.

By Monday evening, all four juvies were flying well and with confidence. All had returned to the nest ledge, and seemed very content to remain there overnight, in each other’s company.  On Tuesday during the daytime watch, the three females had to learn a similar lesson about overconfidence in an unprecedented way, when all three of them became boxed in on the balcony at the same time, requiring a triple rescue as the final action of 2013’s Falcon Watch.  

Many lessons remain for these four young flyers to learn before they disperse later this summer to seek out their own territory. Over the next few weeks, the skies of Harrisburg will be the scene of dazzling aerobatics, silly tail pulling, games of tag and other adolescent playfulness, as well as the serious business of learning to hunt and survive  – all there to be seen, right overhead, if you only look up.

Falcon Watch recap: 

Fledges: 5/31/13, 8:06 AM; 5/31/13, 6:40 PM; 6/1/13, 5:55 AM; 6/1/13, 6:35 AM

Rescues: 5/31/13, around 11 AM, yellow-banded male, released immediately.  6/1/13, around 8 PM, blue-banded female, taken to rehabber for fluids and observation, released 6/3/13.  6/4/13, around 1 PM, red-, white- and blue-banded females, released immediately.

Volunteers: 18 volunteers, 8 days, 442 volunteer hours

Happy flying, kids. Hope to see you in your own nests someday!

The Peregrine Falcon chicks at the nest ledge in Harrisburg are getting ready to fledge, and the Harrisburg Fledgling Watch is on the ground ready to help any new flyers that get into trouble. Although there were no fledges, today was action packed from start to finish.

The day began around 6 this morning, in heavy fog, when the adult male sounded an alarm call and rocketed from his perch above the nest ledge. An American Crow had approached too near the ledge and was abruptly on the receiving end of a furious falcon charge that sent him tumbling through the air. When the crow continued on its original course, a second charge persuaded it to turn aside and give the Carson Building a wide berth. Half an hour later, both adults sounded the alarm and gave chase to a Great Egret passing down Market Street toward the River. It was like watching fighter jets in a dogfight as the egret dived out of the path of two screaming falcons, then sped away, neck stretched to its fullest extent and wings beating as fast as I’ve ever seen an egret pump them. Later in the morning, one of the watchers spotted a mature bald eagle flying high over the Carson Building. The falcons did not react to the eagle, but when a pair of turkey vultures approached the Carson Building from the east, the male rocketed from 333 Market Street and gave them an escort out of Falcon Territory.

Throughout the day, the adults withheld food from the chicks, making numerous flybys in an attempt to lure the chicks into flight. Around 4:30, the female brought a fresh-caught pigeon to the ledge, defeathered it while the chicks clamored around her, then she took the whole bird to the university building next door, while the chicks frantically flapped their wings and screamed at her to bring dinner back. She made three close flybys carrying the prey past the ledge before returning to the Harrisburg University building and eating the pigeon herself.

Around 7:30, the adult falcons wrapped up the day’s action with another dramatic departure from their respective perches, stooping at high speed past the train station. The male returned almost immediately, carrying a small prey to a ledge several stories below the nest ledge, where he defeathered it and ate at least part of it. About a minute after disappearing beyond the train station, the female came back into view, laboring mightily as she carried prey almost as large as herself back to her perch on the University. Eventually, she brought a portion of the prey to the chicks on the ledge, defeathered it, then left them to it. The rain of feathers flying out from the ledge and shimmering in the last rays of sunlight was something to behold! Within a few minutes, the chicks were finished with their meal, and after a few stretches and wingflaps, they all settled down for the night and we headed home.

This entire day was a completely fascinating look at falcon behavior and incredible flying.

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