Cathedral falcon chicks take flight

The peregrine falcons who call Pitt’s Cathedral of Learning home share more than just the… The peregrine falcons who call Pitt’s Cathedral of Learning home share more than just the building with the students who attend classes there: They too are suckers for a free meal at home.

“The young know how to fly and for the most part they know how to feed themselves, but they’re not above coming back for a free meal,” Kate St. John, a volunteer peregrine monitor for the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, said.

Although the falcon chicks were examined just days before they were expected to leave their roost in early June, the Cathedral is not yet an empty nest.

The four chicks, two of each gender, were outfitted with standard identification leg bands and different-colored pieces of electrical tape unique to each of them at a ceremony May 31.

The tape was intended to make it easier to tell each of the four birds apart while they can still be sighted in Pittsburgh and the surrounding region.

St. John, an avid peregrine monitor and long-time volunteer for the WPC, said she still sees the chicks around the city on a regular basis, but expects them to take flight for good soon.

“They first flew around mid-June,” St. John said.

“It was over a period of days from the 11th to the 16th that each of the four chicks first took off.”

St. John says that the habit of peregrine chicks is to make tentative test flights while they’re still learning the basics of hunting and survival from their parents.

Over the course of a month or two, however, St. John said the chicks continue to increase their range until they leave their birth nest indefinitely.

This summer’s chicks have left their actual nest earlier than usual, however, as a result of its removal from a ledge on the Cathedral’s 37th floor to make way for the building’s cleaning crew.

“We removed the nest for the Cathedral’s cleaning July 2, and we’ll go back and reestablish the nest when they’re done,” Beth Fife, Allegheny County Wildlife Conservation Officer for the Pennsylvania Game Commission, said.

Reestablishing the nest means putting down new gravel, a new hood, or covering, to shield the nest from the elements and possibly new camera monitoring equipment.

Video feed was provided by a camera trained on the nest site in the past, but Fife said talks are underway to see if new equipment could be donated for the site.

“If it happens, you can watch streaming video of the nest if you want online,” Fife said.

Despite the temporary removal of their nest, the chicks and their parents haven’t gone far.

“Last week we saw the one with blue [electrical tape] on, one of the females, and the one with red [electrical tape] on, one of the males,” St. John said.

She says the falcon family has been spotted atop the steeples of Heinz Chapel and St. Paul’s Cathedral near the Cathedral of Learning.

Fife says the Cathedral’s summer chicks generally begin to disperse starting around September or November and that, true to their name (peregrine means “wanderer”), they could end up almost anywhere.

“They might go to Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit; everybody that sees a band number lets us know by accessing the Midwest Peregrine Site online,” Fife said.

The site allows birders near and far to contribute to the effort to track the birds’ migratory patterns and to follow the burgeoning success of the species in recent years.