A new breed of falcons soars back from brink of extinction in Virginia
FOR NINE years, a pair of peregrine falcons have made their home in an unlikely place: The smoke stacks of a Virginia power plant.
But animal researchers say the unique resting place might have helped to spur a local resurgence of a new breed of falcons in Virginia after another breed disappeared from the area more than a half-century ago. It’s also helping researchers understand more about the birds, which were bred with peregrines from other geographic areas, amid a biological renaissance uncommon in nature.
Home is near the top of a red and white smokestack at Dominion Energy’s Possum Point Power Station. She’s 11 and from the Betsy Ross Bridge in New Jersey; he’s nine, born at a power plant in Maryland.
Together in Virginia for nearly a decade, they’ve had 25 young ones in a nest box placed by researchers. It’s a wooden box with a roof, two open sides and a bottom full of pea gravel, which is ideal for laying eggs. It is meant to mimic the type of home falcons would make on a cliff.
They love to overlook water, and they love to be up high.
Researchers from the College of William & Mary and Virginia Commonwealth University band the legs of each of the pair’s baby falcons, known as eyases, at the plant in Prince William County, as part of a partnership that began 12 years ago. During the banding process, metal tags are placed on their legs as the offspring are weighed and examined. Feather and blood samples are taken before the young are returned to their nest.
The exam is performed while the chicks still have a dusting of down feathers covering their flight feathers.
Several days ago, Bryan Watts, director of the Center for Conservation Biology at William & Mary and VCU, journeyed about 350 feet up the smokestack to look at the three youngest additions to the nest, two females and a male. The elevator’s vibration as it ascended prompted one falcon to alert the others. The call was a loud alarm a squawking warning that someone was approaching.
Watts quickly collected two of the 30-day-old chicks and placed them in plastic red and blue containers. The third chick, too young to be on his own, dashed amid the commotion - testing his wings by gliding away and disappearing into the forest.
It was a brief getaway, but for two days, the search was on.
Watts said banding the young birds helps researchers monitor the population size.
Some have numbers that can be seen from afar and others are colour-coded (Virginia’s are a forest-green shade). He said bands help keep track of the number of pairs in the area and tell researchers how many young they are producing.
It’s a far cry from the early 1960s, when the eastern peregrine falcon was virtually wiped out east of the Mississippi River amid widespread pesticide usage - going from 25 pairs to none in Virginia and from 350 pairs to nearly gone in eastern North America, Watts said. The peregrine was placed on the endangered list, and the birds were slowly re-introduced to the area. — WPBloomberg