For baby raptors, cuddly names may not fly — UC seeking ideas
If the public doesn’t step up quickly, the three elegant raptors that are about to fledge from their nest in UC Berkeley’s equally elegant bell tower could go through life as Fluffy, Cottonball and Marshmallow.
Those are the recommendations of a woman named Bunny, who responded on Twitter to UC Berkeley’s public call for suggestions on what to name the peregrine falcon chicks that hatched April 23 in the upper reaches of the 307-foot bell tower known as the Campanile.
In truth, the peregrines — two males and a female — were at first nearly indistinguishable from a marshmallow, a cotton ball and whatever a fluffy might be. The only difference was that each chick of prey had a tiny hook protruding from its whiteness, and a pair of enormous dark, round eyes.
Those little hooks will soon grow into formidable weapons — ideal for dining on fellow avians — from pigeons and ducks to songbirds and hummingbirds. And those saucer eyes will soon make Superman’s super-power vision
seem myopic, as they’re capable of focusing on more than one object at a time, even as their owner zooms through the skies. Although the Campanile babies have yet to take wing, already they belong to an exclusive club: Peregrine falcons are the fastest animals in the world, reaching speeds of up to 300 miles an hour, said Glenn Stewart, a researcher with the UC Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group.
He and Zeka Glucs, a UC Santa Cruz graduate student, got a taste of the peregrines’ speed and their power when they visited the Campanile nest on May 17 to clip bands around each chick’s two legs for identification and tracking.
As Stewart squeezed into the cramped space and reached into the nest, something strafed the human invaders. The researchers were untouched — but the UC Berkeley employee who accompanied them up the Campanile elevator suffered a ripped jacket.
“You almost don’t even see them coming,” Stewart said of the chicks’ parents.
In a question-and-answer with UC Berkeley staff, he explained how it became known that baby peregrines were tucked up in the 103year-old Campanile.
“The way it works with peregrines is, they don’t go home every day and eat dinner at the dining room table,” Stewart said. “They eat their
“The way it works with peregrines is, they don’t go home every day and eat dinner at the dining room table . ... So when the food started coming into the balcony on April 23, we knew the eggs had hatched.”
Glenn Stewart, UC Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group
food where they catch it. But when they have babies, they bring the food into the nest area. So when the food started coming into the balcony on April 23, we knew the eggs had hatched.”
The adult birds return each year to nest at the same place, and this is Year Two for the Campanile peregrines, Stewart said, adding that they live up to 20 years and breed until about 15.
The new chicks will be tracked for the next couple of decades, so UC Berkeley figures they’ll need names.
Offerings so far include Cam, Pa and Nile, suggested
by @Campanile. Most of the proposed names have so far been UC Berkeley-centric, such as Blue, Gold and Oski; and Go, Bears and Exclamation Point.
Stewart, who fell in love with peregrines after reading “My Side of the Mountain” at 11, has his own heartwarming idea of what to call the chicks.
“The letters and numbers on their bands,” the sentimental scientist said. “That’s their names, as far as I’m concerned.”
That would be 11/AM for the girl, and U/46 and U/27 for the boys.
UC Berkeley is accepting alternate suggestions from the public on Twitter and Facebook. The deadline is Monday, just days before Potential Fluffy, Possible Cottonball and Maybe Marshmallow are due to leap from their nest for the first time and disappear.