29 June

This has been a wonderful week for downtown observers, because our whole peregrine family has been very active and visible. The fledglings have concentrated their activity amidst the buildings near their home cliff, and, of course, the attentive and watchful adults have been near by. The youngsters are much more proficient fliers than even a week ago, so the adults have resorted to being close but inconspicuous, to avoid being pestered about food.

The fledglings still see their parents as sources of food; they learned that at about five days, once their vision was good enough to see the adults bring them meals. As they've matured, they have become more aggressive when they want food. They need that aggression to be effective predators, but right now they're directing it toward their parents rather than toward prey. They don't realize that those birds they instinctively chase are food! Soon, they will begin to make the connection and start re-directing their aggression toward catching and killing prey. Most fledglings make their first kill after three or four weeks on the wing. The male will have been on the wing three weeks Sunday, and the female is a few days behind him. Meanwhile, they have a great life with no responsibilities. They have nothing to do but sleep, eat, fly, and explore a multitude of new perches. They are energetic and entertaining. Every day, downtown observers look up to see every conceivable juxtaposition of fledglings and adults swirling over and around the skyscrapers. Some of the fledgling play has been on the rough side; the male bopped his sister on the head in flight, and she shoved him off a ledge. The lessons here will carry over to adulthood. Males, with their superior flight ability, can dominate females in the air, but the larger females dominate on ledges, where they can push the males around. As they range further afield, we will see less and less of them, so these days are special.

22 June

Our young male, the first to fledge, has now been on the wing for two weeks. He fledged Sunday, June 10, and his one surviving sister followed on Thursday, June 14. The two fledglings followed a familiar routine: they spent most of their time on the Rainier Tower, with Stewart and Bell close by, except when they were hunting for them. The male fledgling had to content himself with swooping at his perched sister until she became proficient enough to join him in aerial play; since then, they've chased each other round and round the buildings near their home "cliff" and round and round the "hat", the pyramidal structure on the top of the WaMu tower.

One or both youngters spent the night either in or near the nest box for several nights after fledging. This varies from year to year; some birds visit "home" regularly for several weeks, while others ignore it, after they make that first flight that frees them to explore the rest of their natal territory.

Like most years, one of the fledglings - the male - got caught in a ventilation pit on the Rainier Tower last week and was removed by project volunteers who work in downtown Seattle. It is amazing how fast a little brown peregrine can run on those great big yellow feet! He was difficult to corner, but eventually flipped onto his back and presented talons to his tormentors, who scooped him up and put him in a box for transport to the roof. Within three or four minutes, he was on the wing again. He circled back to look at his rescuers and then headed straight for the nest ledge, where Stewart was in the nest box. Stewart, who spent less time than usual in the nest box this year, has been in and out of it since the young left the ledge. He has preened, picked at gravel, vocalized at Bell flying by, and scraped in the box, as if it were spring. We have seen this behavior by him before, right after fledging, but not for several years.

As of this weekend, the two fledglings are spending more time on the Financial Center and the Seattle Tower, lower buildings that are across the street from the Washington Mutual Tower. The adults have started perching on small window ledges on their home cliff, where they are close enough to hassle gulls and anything else that might threaten the youngsters. This often gives office workers inside the building up close and personal views of the birds that they don't get the rest of the year, when they are only remote and tiny silhouettes, high above.

18 June

We now have several days observations of our male and female fledglings on the wing. He, with over a week on the wing (fledged June 10), has learned to use the rising air currents effectively, and his circling and gliding are graceful and sure. His female sibling has less time on the wing (fledged June 14) and less finesse in flight, but her wingbeats are strong, and she appears very fast in direct flight. If we could follow them with a camera during all their flights, their transformation in flight skills would probably appear to be as fast as their changes in behavior when they were nestlings.

It's not just flight skills that they need to acquire; they also need to learn how to land on different types of perches and how to use their feet for grasping and grabbing. These naive youngsters still believe that food is something a parent delivers to them; they've got a lot to learn. Holding down food and pulling on it was something they learned on the ledge. They also learned to snatch food from their mother's beak and run away with it. Now they are learning to fly to an adult carrying prey and attempt to take that prey from the adult in flight. Fortunately, the adults are good at lightning-fast dives to retrieve what they drop.

Both Bell and Stewart are bringing in food for their offspring, but usually one parent watches them while the other hunts. The fledglings are not yet at the stage where they chase the adults every time they see them, so the adults can perch within view, though not too close, without having to deal with much more than an occasional bout of screaming from one of the youngsters. The fledglings have a great life right now - they have the whole downtown to explore, the wind to play in, each other for socializing, and the adults to bring them food. Halcyon days - but the transition from fledglings to self-sufficient predators is already underway.

Stay tuned.

14 June

The last few days have been stressful, to put it mildly. Both the females fledged this week, but only one survived less than 24 hours after her maiden flight. Both the male and remaining female gave us some anxious moments, too. The male fledged on Saturday, and we were unable to locate him Monday. On Tuesday, we got a report that, on Monday afternoon, he made a very rough landing on the corner of the Rainier Tower and flipped over onto the roof . Of course, we had visions of an injured bird lying on the roof in the heavy rains Monday night and Tuesday morning. We got permission to search the roof, but found no trace of him. Whew! Where he was hanging out the in the maze of downtown skyscrapers, we don't know, but he reappeared Wednesday morning, looking lively and healthy.

The first female fledged, off camera, sometime after 10:28 Wednesday morning. Yesterday, Thursday morning, around 7:00, she hit a window on the WaMu tower, above the NE 48th floor balcony, and fell to the balcony. It appeared that she died from a head injury; she had no other visible damage. These fledglings are so beautiful, with their spirit and curiosity and their perfect new feathers, that a death like this seems a waste, yet most of them won't survive to join the breeding population. It is the way their world is.

While the Thursday observers were retrieving the dead fledgling, her sibling made her first flight. She gave us a scare, too. Early in the afternoon, she smacked into the wall above the nest ledge and fell onto the ledge. The wall is glass and is not reflective; what in the world was she doing when she hit it? However, after a few hops and wing-flaps, she located some prey remains (that the adults had left) and eagerly gobbled down a twenty minute meal. She then settled down for a nap, until Bell brought her a fresh pigeon.

This morning, she and her sibling perched on the nest ledge together. They flapped their wings furiously and raced up and down the ledge, just as if they had never fledged; then they flew off together.

Stay tuned for their continuing adventures..

11 June

The male eyas fledged! After a few tantalizing days of frantic flapping, hopping, and running, he left the ledge at 1233 on Sunday, June 10. He fledged from the upper ledge, at the back of the main ledge, and headed straight east over Third Avenue. Our camera doesn't show where he went after that, but he was perched near the top of the "hat", the pyramidal structure on the top of the building, by 1650 Sunday. He was perched in the same area this morning, in the rain.

6 June

Only two weeks ago, at the time of banding, our eyasses were nearly all white fluff. Now our three young are almost completely feathered. The male has only remnants of down, while the two females are still transitioning through the disheveled stage - feathers intermingled with fuzz. They are fun to watch. One minute they are snuggled together in the nest box; the next, they are shoving each other around in an effort to get to a parent with food first. They pick at scraps on the ledge and can feed themselves, yet they often play with prey remains rather than eating, or get the scraps caught in their talons and drag them around until they figure out how to shake them off. They run and hop up and down the ledge and furiously flap their wings, sending shed down flying.

Based on past years, we expect that the male will probably fledge this weekend. Though males are smaller than females, they develop faster and usually leave the nest first. Once they have their full powers of flight, the more agile males are the aerial acrobats, while the females are the power fliers. This tendency is obvious after just a few days on the wing, when the males swoop and dip at their lumbering female siblings, who are still concentrating on flapping from one perch to the next. The literature often says that peregrine young leave the nest 42- 45 days post hatching; this appears to be accurate for females, but the males often go before 40 days post hatch. It appears that temperament can be as much a factor as physical development in determining when they take wing - they go when they are ready, and only they know what triggers that first flight. They have a lot of challenges facing them at first flight. They have to learn to use their wings effectively before their feathers are completely grown, and they have to learn to land with sure feet. They have to learn to avoid reflective glass and many other dangers. But there's the whole world out there to explore, and all those birds to chase.