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| Courtesy MDC |
ST. LOUIS, Mo. -- Through
a cooperative effort among the Missouri Department of Conservation
(MDC), Ameren Missouri and the
World Bird Sanctuary (WBS), tens-of-thousands of people from around
Missouri and around the world have been getting a bird’s-eye view of
peregrine falcons raising five chicks in a nest box at Ameren’s Sioux
Energy Center in St. Louis. A camera mounted near
the birds’ nest box provides video feeds to each organization’s
website.
Ameren staff
installed the webcam at the nest site in early January with this year’s
nesting activities first spotted in the beginning of February. According
to WBS Director Jeff Meshach, the female peregrine
falcon laid five eggs in mid-March, which hatched in mid-April.
Meshach placed leg
bands on the five falcon chicks on Monday, May 14. The process took
about one hour and involved removing the chicks from the nest and taking
them down from the nesting site to a trailer.
WBS staff then drew blood samples and took weights and measurements of
the chicks. After the chicks were banded,
Meshach returned them to the nest.
"The chicks appear
healthy and very well fed,” said Meshach. “The average number of chicks
per nest is below four, so it is fairly rare to have five chicks,
especially two years in a row now."
He added that the
chicks will continue to rapidly grow. “The two male chicks should be
fledging the nest between 40 and 50 days old, on or about June 4,” he
said. “The three females will fledge between 50
and 60 days of age, on or about June 15. Since the females are up to a
third larger than the males, it takes them longer to develop.”
The leg bands are issued to permitted organizations through the U.S. Geological Survey.
“When the bands are
observed, hopefully on healthy peregrines in the wild, they can provide
information on migration routes, migration distances and distributions
on breeding birds,” Meshach explained. “For
instance, the mother of the chicks has a black-over-green band with the
letter P within the black and the number 43 within the green. We were
able to see the band because of the camera. We now know she was hatched
at a power plant in Louisa County, Iowa, in
2005."
Watch a brief video of the banding at
youtube.com/watch?v=
The nest can be viewed
live from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m. (CT) seven days a week on MDC’s website at
mdc.mo.gov/node/16934, on Ameren’s website at
AmerenMissouri.com/FalconWatch and on the WBS website at
worldbirdsanctuary.org.
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