Focusing on falcon nests

Five sites are outfitted for live streaming

We Energies webcams that track peregrine falcons in southeastern Wisconsin have gone online, with views of five nests in southeastern Wisconsin. Chicks are expected at any time.

Webcams that track the nesting habits of peregrine falcons in southeastern Wisconsin went online Monday, and chicks are expected any minute at one site, a power plant in Kenosha County.

This is the fourth year We Energies has been following the springtime activities of peregrines with a live webcam. The company also provides blog updates on the raptors.

Five sites are outfitted for live streaming, stretching from Port Washington in Ozaukee County to Pleasant Prairie in Kenosha County.

We Energies spokeswoman Cathy Schulze says the company website has been training solely on Pleasant Prairie on Monday because of the impending hatch.

Falcon expert Greg Septon has estimated the eggs at Pleasant Prairie are closest to hatching — predicting a hatch date by now.

This year’s nesting situation at Pleasant Prairie features a new female, Olivia. She was born atop a bank building in Allen County, Ohio, in 2010. For the last year three years, her nest has been at the Kenosha Medical Center.

This year she mated with the male at the Pleasant Prairie site — known as PBR, which, ironically, was born at a Miller Brewing Co. site in the Menomonee Valley in 2009.

The whereabouts of the former female at Pleasant Prairie, Thilmany, are not known, according to Schulze. Last year the parents at Pleasant Prairie produced four chicks; three have survived.

All told, the site has produced 56 or 57 chicks since 1997, according to data from Septon. Pleasant Prairie has produced the most chicks of any of the utility’s sites since 1997.

We Energies sites have produced more than 200 chicks, according to Septon’s 2014 report.

All told, 593 peregrines have been produced since 1992.

Septon first released peregrines in 1987 at the former First Wisconsin skyscraper while working at the Milwaukee Public Museum. He began banding the birds the next year.

DDT was responsible for wiping out peregrines by weakening egg shells. No peregrines are believed to have lived in Wisconsin from 1965 to 1987.

Before the insecticide was used, peregrines lived primarily on cliffs of the Mississippi and Wisconsin rivers and the Door Peninsula.

Now, most are living in urban areas and nesting on office buildings and power plants.

Peregrine falcons were placed on Wisconsin’s list of endangered species in 1975. They were delisted as a federal endangered species in 1999, according to the Department of Natural Resources.

In metropolitan Milwaukee, peregrines are nesting at We Energies’ Valley, Oak Creek, Wauwatosa and Port Washington power plants, at the U.S. Bank building; the University of Wisconsin-milwaukee; Miller Brewing; and Froedtert Malt in West Milwaukee.