City Hall peregrine falcons looking better than ever
It has been a strange year for everyone, and that includes Grace and H2 — the peregrine falcons who nest atop the 18-story tower at San Jose City Hall.
Instead of laying her first few eggs of the season inside the nest box, Grace did so out on the ledge last month. And as you could guess, that wasn’t going to work. But she and her mate, H2, tried again this month with better results: As of Thursday, she was keeping two eggs warm in the nest box.
And the family drama has been better to watch than ever, thanks to a pair of new cameras installed in December by the city of San Jose, the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group and the Northern California-based Institute for Wildlife Studies. Getting better camera tech was a lesson for many of us who found ourselves in Zoom land more often than not in 2020, and it has made a world of difference. There are now two cameras aimed at the box and surrounding ledge, and they can be adjusted remotely, which was beyond the capabilities of the last single cam
era. Fans cheered the longawaited installation, which was aided considerably by San Francisco resident Rich Chambers, a fan who contributed the biggest gift for the project.
You can read more about the falcons, and the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group’s efforts to study them, as well as get links to the cameras’ two YouTube feedsat tinyurl. com/mvbjh9m8.
BIRTHDAY FOR THE BARD >>
Silicon Valley Shakespeare will mark William Shakespeare’s birthday — often celebrated April 23 — with “The ‘Dear Will’ Letters,” an online update of the show it premiered in 2008. Drawing on the Bard’s own texts, SVS Dramaturg Doll Piccotto has some of the writer’s famous characters seeking relationship advice from him and features real-life couples performing some of the most iconic scenes from his plays. San Jose filmmaker Christian Pizzirani recorded some of the scenes at Sanborn Park, a location familiar to Silicon Valley Shakespeare fans, and others will be performed live.
The show runs today and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m., and audiences will be invited to stick around for a post-performance cast party and virtual
birthday toast. Tickets are $15 to $40 and are available at svshakespeare.org.
BUILDING A MOSAIC >> Lots of good news coming from Usha Srinivasan and Priya Das, who founded Sangam Arts in 2016 and now have transformed that arts organization into Mosaic America. The group launched a new online series, “From Diversity to Belonging,” in partnership with the Commonwealth Club on Thursday, and it will explore the relationship between art and diversity.
“We’re so proud of the diversity in Silicon Valley but realized that communities were siloed amongst themselves,” Srinivasan said. “We wanted to see if art and cultural events could bring everyone together and the answer was a resounding YES.”
Continuing in that direction, Mosaic America has “Celebrating Good Trouble,” a program Saturday at 2 p.m. in collaboration with NuMu Los Gatos and the 10th annual Art Now, a juried exhibition of Santa Clara County high school art. The program, which will feature musician Ray Furuta, dancer Urmila Vudali and poets LaToya Fernandez and Lisa Rosenberg. You can register for the free event at tinyurl. com/MosaicNuMu and find out about Mosaic America’s other programming at its new website, mosaicamerica.org.