Baby peregrine falcon Ripley hatches atop Oshawa hospital
It’s a boy! A rare baby peregrine falcon hatched on the roof of the Lakeridge Health Oshawa hospital building and has been named “Ripley.”
Ripley hatched in early May on the roof of the G-wing, weighing 820 grams. The name was chosen by a Lakeridge Health painter, who was one of the staff to first discover the at-risk species of falcons nesting on the roof.
The proud peregrine falcon parents (one from Toronto and one from Buffalo) have been nesting on the roof of the Oshawa hospital for years.
“Once they have set up in the area they come back every year,” said Neil Clarke, director of engineering, infrastructure and security for Lakeridge Health.
The nesting pair use a box designed by hospital staff (under the guidance of experts at the Canadian Peregrine Foundation) and dive bomb hospital maintenance workers if they come too close to the nest. Workers are now in the habit of wearing hard hats and holding a broom over their heads to keep the crow-sized birds at bay.
“You have to be very careful around them especially when they have young ones,” said Clarke. “You hold a broom higher than your head and they hit the broom instead.”
A webcam has been installed on the hospital roof so maintenance workers can make sure the adult birds aren’t too close by before climbing onto the roof.
Now the Lakeridge Health IT department is working to open the video feed from the camera to the public through the Canadian Peregrine Foundation website. It’s expected to be live for the public in the next month.
“Once the webcam is up and running that will be cool,” said Clarke. “It’s not the most pretty, there’s quite a lot of cleanup. They eat a lot of pigeons.”
Clarke said the hospital had a problem with pigeons before the peregrines made the roof their home. The birds of prey work as a team, with one bird distracting the pigeon while the other dives down from a height to catch it and take it back to the nest for the baby bird.
Peregrine falcons are a well-known species at risk of becoming threatened or endangered. According to the Canadian Peregrine Foundation, the population started drastically declining in the 1950s due to the use of the DDT pesticide disrupting the calcium in the birds’ eggshells. Any eggs that were produced were too thin to take the weight of the parents during incubation. Many countries banned the use of DDT in the 1970s, but other countries still use the pesticide and peregrines have a large migration territory, according to the Canadian Peregrine Foundation.
For decades, there have been ongoing efforts by environmental groups to help increase the number of peregrines. Thousands of young peregrines have been released across Canada.
Many predator birds have a high rate of juvenile mortality. Approximately 80 per cent of peregrines die before turning 1 year old, according to the Canadian Peregrine Foundation. The peregrine population in Canada is growing but slowly, according to the experts.
Ripley’s egg was the only one that hatched of four laid on the Oshawa hospital roof this year. Last year, none of the eggs hatched. Representatives from the Ministry of Environment came to the Oshawa hospital recently to place a tracking band on Ripley and took the unhatched eggs to study.
The peregrine family usually stays on the Oshawa hospital roof until September and then migrates south.