Rare peregrine falcons nest at Pitt

Erie and Dorothy have been living in the nooks and crannies atop the peak floors of the… Erie and Dorothy have been living in the nooks and crannies atop the peak floors of the Cathedral of Learning.

Erie and Dorothy are a pair of peregrine falcons that have inhabited Oakland for the last few years.

Erie was born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1998, and Dorothy was born in Milwaukee, Wis., in 1999.

Both falcons are banded on their ankles so people know exactly when and where the peregrines were born.

“It’s a building that looks like a cliff to them. The Cathedral is so valuable to falcons that they fight for the prime spots,” said Kate St. John, director of information technology at WQED Pittsburgh. “Sometimes they fight to the death.”

The Western Pennsylvania Conservancy erected a potential nesting site out of wood and gravel last year at the Cathedral.

“The female [falcon] would go on to a ledge or cliff where she could create a little bowl with soil or gravel on a ledge and we provided that for them,” said Charles Bier, director of the WPC’s Natural Heritage Program. “This was an experiment because there was no way to force the [falcons] to come to the nest box.”

They have to have privacy or they will not return to the nest.

“I’d have to say there’s about a 100 percent chance that the falcons will return to the nest because they had a successful nesting this past year,” Bier said.

The University was very good at keeping the building locked and allowing the falcons to be unharmed or bothered, according to Bier.

“I have been an avid bird watcher for many years, so I was very excited at the arrival of the falcons,” St. John said. She has been following the falcons since January 2001.

Falcons eat only birds and pigeons are plentiful in Oakland.

“I think how well the falcons fit into an urban setting is rather interesting,” Bier said. “They came to Pittsburgh on their own accord and are able to live substantially.”

According to Bier, the falcons do not eat only pigeons, but various birds and even ducks.

“The falcons have an interesting scooping method to catch their prey,” St. John, said. “They fly dive on [the pigeons] and catch them with their claws.”

St. John did not want the specific floor that the falcons have been nesting on to be released.

“An individual who is not being careful could end it all for the falcons, if he/she is poking around to try catch to a glimpse of the falcons,” she said. “A falcon will not come back to its nest if it has been at all tampered with.”

St. John is hoping for a Web cam in the near future to be able to keep watch of the falcons and to possibly ensure their safety from people trying to get close to them.

During the winter months, it is best to stay far away from the nests of the falcons because that is when they are most territorial, according to St. John.

According to Bier, the males would fly into the nest, relieving the female from her incubating duties, and the female would fly out.

“The coolest thing [the falcons] do is fly,” St. John said. “They can do acrobatic tricks such as diving straight down from a high point in the sky.”

“This year, since they had a successful nest, it was neat watching the immature young ones trying to move about,” said Karen Lang, a staff specialist in Pitt’s Office of Admissions and Financial Aid who has been watching the falcons since 1999.

“It’s relaxing for me to walk around the Cathedral to see if I can see [the falcons],” she said.

Since Erie and Dorothy successfully bred, they became the second nesting pair of falcons in Western Pennsylvania. They had four chicks and, after four to six weeks, the chicks left the nest and went out on their own.

The falcons that once lived on the Gulf Tower Downtown were the first to successfully reproduce in the early 1990s.

The falcons made a slight revival in the Midwestern and Eastern states back in 1999, and were removed from the federal endangered species list.

But falcons are still endangered in Pennsylvania.

“We have formed a great partnership between a conservancy and a university, and it was a great way to communicate about endangered species to the community and to the students as well,” Bier said. “It adds a dimension to the campus having the world’s fastest bird living right in its campus.”