Flying High
She’s the queen of the skies over High Bridge Park, and a devoted mate and model housekeeper as well. A 13-year-old female peregrine falcon — one of the oldest wild moms of her species — has hatched another brood of chicks under the Sunset Highway bridge upstream from the confluence of Hangman Creek and the Spokane River. The bridge is considered one of the country’s premier urban nesting sites for the once-endangered species.
“This is the seventh year that we know she’s produced young there, although last year her eggs didn’t hatch,” said Howard Ferguson, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist. “I was afraid that she’d become infertile because of her age, but she’s back again this year and her chicks are very healthy.”
On June 17, Ferguson and Spokane falconer Doug Pineo were lowered on a boom by city crews to put identification bands on the chicks. “The mother bird seems so used to me,” Ferguson said, “she just stepped aside for the procedure, as if to say ‘Oh, it’s you again!’ “
The female was hatched and banded in 1991 and the male in 1994 at the World Center for Birds of Prey near Boise. Various agencies, volunteers and Washington Water Power (now Avista) cooperated to raise these and other peregrines in a box along the Clark Fork Delta near the Idaho-Montana border, where they took off on their own when they were strong enough to fly.
This pair of birds is known to have produced 17 chicks in Spokane. Nine have been banded, including this year’s two female chicks.
Their success is among the shining examples in the recovery of a species that was on the verge of doom 30 years ago.
Currently, Washington has 114 peregrine nests documented at sites ranging from remote canyons to Seattle skyscrapers, said Eric Cummins, state Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist in Olympia. That’s up from 84 nests documented in 2001.
“About 85 percent of the nests are occupied in a given year,” he said, noting that nests produce one to four chicks. “Only about 30 percent of those chicks will survive through their first year,” he said.
Spokane’s Sunset Highway bridge, which parallel’s the Interstate-90 and railroad bridges at the junction with U.S. Highway 195, is a standout location for giving chicks a chance to survive, Ferguson said.
Choice peregrine nest sites in Eastern Washington have been found near Palouse Falls, Banks Lake and Coffee Pot Lake. But Spokane stands out as one of the best urban sites.
Hangman Creek is a narrow ribbon of water, just big enough to produce the insects that attract the birds peregrines can hunt, such as the white-throated swifts that nest in the vertical tubes under the I-90 bridge. Yet the small stream is in a big gorge with steep banks and a variety of shrubs and trees. This combination gives the fledglings a decent chance at surviving the first few unpracticed flights, Pineo explained.
Adult peregrines are top guns that can stoop to speeds exceeding 200 mph to prey upon other birds in mid-air. But peregrine chicks making their first leap from the nest often land in a heap on the ground.
“That’s the beauty of the High Bridge site,” Pineo said. “They’re not likely to drown or be hit by a vehicle or snapped up by a dog.”
Weak-flying fledglings can easily avoid Hangman Creek. Even if they hit the ground, they can get oriented, walk up a steep bank if necessary and fly into a tree or shrub for more security. Given a chance, the parents will continue to feed the chicks and eventually they can make short hops back up to the bridge or aerie for another shot at flying, Pineo said.
Chicks from the nest on the I-5 bridge between Portland and Vancouver never survive their first flights “because they inevitably end up in the Columbia River,” he said.
Indeed, many urban sites from Seattle to New York offer fledglings little hope. The birds reared under the popular public eye of video cameras at the Washington Mutual building in Seattle have the safety of ledges and a bounty of food. “But when they fledge, they crash into a sidewalk or get hit by a car,” Cummins said.
The downtown Spokane release site that Washington Water Power sponsored from 1988-1991 in the building overlooking Spokane Falls behind City Hall was a good visible site for publicizing the peregrine recovery, “but a poor site for success,” Pineo said: “Peregrine chicks don’t take off on their first flight wearing a life jacket.”
Peregrine falcon numbers plunged throughout the United States shortly after World War II because of the widespread use of the pesticide DDT. The chemical accumulated in the birds peregrine falcons ate, which led to a decrease in falcon reproduction.
Rachel Carson, a former Service employee, helped alert the public to the hazards of pesticides on wildlife in 1962 when she published her book Silent Spring. Ten years later, the Environmental Protection Agency made the historic and, at the time, controversial decision to ban the use of DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides in the United States. This was the first step toward recovery for the peregrine.
In 1970, the peregrine falcon was among the first species listed as endangered under the original Endangered Species Conservation Act. The eastern peregrine had disappeared and populations in the west had declined by as much as 80 to 90 percent.
By 1975, peregrines reached an all-time low of 324 nesting pairs in North America.
Peregrine recovery was spurred by the national ban on pesticides that thin eggshells, aggressive rearing of the birds in captivity by private groups, release of captive-reared birds and protection of nest sites.
The peregrine falcon was removed from the federal endangered species list in 1999, with at least 1,650 peregrine breeding pairs documented in the United States and Canada
In 2002, the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission reclassified the peregrine from endangered to “sensitive species” status on a statewide basis. Surveys in 2001 had documented 72 peregrine pairs in Washington — up from five pairs in 1980, when the bird was added to the state endangered species list.
This year, for the first time in four decades, the state and federal governments offered a limited number of permits for falconers to capture wild peregrines in Washington and raise them for falconry. “The Fish and Wildlife Service encouraged the taking of the birds in several sites where we know the birds have little chance to survive after they fledge,” Cummins said.
Three were taken from Eastern Washington and two from the West Side.
But the Spokane peregrines in their secure nest under the Sunset bridge arch over Hangman Creek are bothered only for a mid-June banding mission. Ferguson and Pineo time the visit so the birds are just feathering out but unable to fly. “The bodies and feet are full size so they can be sexed and safely banded,” Pineo said.
The leg bands are colored-coded and numbered, allowing researchers to identify the birds by using spotting scopes.
George Orr, a retired fireman and former state legislator, has been observing the Spokane peregrines for years. “You can go to the bridge or High Bridge Park and watch them hunt,” he said. “It’s better than TV.”
The adult peregrines easily overtake fast-flying swifts, swallows, starlings and pigeons in the skies above the creek. “The male often heads east and hunts in downtown Spokane, where there’s not shortage of pigeons,” Pineo said.
But Orr had a magical birding moment on July 1. He saw and adult peregrine stoop to blinding speed and nail a pigeon a mere six feet off the ground. Then he looked around and found a young peregrine that, after making its first flight, had landed unceremoniously on the ground.
“It was trying his damnedest to fly, but he was like a helicopter with its tail rotor shot off,” Orr said. “It didn’t have enough oomph to take off again.” He called the Fish and Wildlife Department and Ferguson told him to leave the bird there, although Orr said he couldn’t resist putting it up on a bridge ledge to offer it some safety.
“It’s critical to leave them alone when on the ground,” Ferguson said. “People have picked them up and taken them to a vet and we have to get them back as fast as possible. The parents are the best at feeding and tending them, and they’ll do it ever 30 minutes to two hours even if they have to come down to the ground.”
“I’ve been watching them every day since, and both chicks are flying now,” Orr said. “They look like rock ‘n’ rollers with all the bracelets they’re wearing — three apiece.”
Once the young become proficient hunters, the peregrines will range away from the Sunset Highway bridge. The young often show up in the West Plains in August and September before the start heading south for the winter, Pineo said.
The adults have returned each spring in early April.