When I was still working in Hartford, across the street from my building was a nesting site for Peregrine Falcons. There was a couple of cameras set up to record all nesting attempts; failures and successes. When I discovered the webcam on the internet I would periodically forward the pictures to my co-workers. I think I was more interested in the birds than anyone else. This went on for a few years. I'd check every Spring and then follow the results of the nest via the pictures and the cameras. As you can see these pictures are from 2011 and I believe budget cuts among other things have contributed to the shutting down of the cameras for the last two years. It has been a source of frustration for me to keep looking at the website only to see that there is no camera action going on at all.
Another thing I never liked to see (but realized it was an unavoidable part of their lives) was the baby birds sitting out in the rain...especially because the rooftop that held the nest would often flood somewhat. Not the best design for a roof I guess but come to think of it that nest is nothing more than a shallow box with mostly rocks in it...how comfortable can that be?
So this was the last successful family of Peregrine Falcons that I was able to get photos of. It was a family of 4 this time. In years previous I rarely saw more than 2 live baby birds. Sometimes they would have more eggs but for various reasons (mostly unknown to me) the babies would not hatch or would not live. Some times the people monitoring the nest would post notes as to what happened to the eggs or the baby birds. Sometimes there were no notes. One year the baby birds were all eaten by another bird of prey and the adult birds didn't stay much longer after that. I was so upset to read that! But the adults did come back again the following year. It is my understanding that they come back every year.
Knowing that the babies are so vulnerable, I watched almost every day for new still shots and even tuned into the webcams so I could watch the birds live. When I first saw these babies all splayed out like the one in the corner above, I thought he was dead. He wasn't...I think they exhaust themselves moving around and then just lay there until they gain their strength back.
Then as they got bigger they moved more. Sometimes they would move out of camera range and that may be for days. My heart was in my throat every time I tuned in....thinking someone had died. Then they would pop back up in a picture or suddenly peek into the camera lens and I would take a deep breath and relax once again.
Mom and Dad would take turns feeding the babies. They are considered to be good parents in the bird community but they never really cut the mustard as far as I was concerned. In a perfect world they would never lose any babies if they were good bird parents.
But at least they came back faithfully and brought food nearly every time too.
See....the fella in the corner by himself is fine....just faking it. :)
Mom (or Dad...I can't tell the difference) has brought food. The babies are lining up for a meal. Boy are they getting big! It must be hard to keep them all fed.
And in this picture if you look around the edges of the rooftop you will notice the babies all standing on the edge looking around. They are HUGE for babies....but still babies none the less. At this stage I imagine they are learning to fly and will be finding their own food soon. Sometimes I'd see the large birds flying around when I went out to catch my bus. I never could tell if it was a parent bird or the babies...they grew so fast. But I also noticed that all the pigeons in the area made themselves scarce when the silhouette of a Peregrine Falcon was in the air.
