It’s Falconcam time: Chicks are hatching…
Just in time for Mother's Day, the Peregrine Fund reports that two chicks hatched in a Peregrine falcon nesting box high atop a downtown Boise office building yesterday. Thus far, the newborn chicks look like white fluffballs, the fund reports, but within the next six weeks, they’ll be fully feathered and ready to fly. The first two eggs hatched yesterday morning; the fund said chicks’ siblings could emerge in the next few days, but when I looked at the Falconcam just now, I saw at least three fuzzy chicks, with a fourth starting to move, apparently emerging from its shell.
The Peregrine Fund reports that “mom has been doing a really good job of incubating,” hiding both the chicks and eggs from view. That’s what I saw when I first checked in a few minutes ago, but just now, amid some chirping, the other parent arrived and the mom moved – and there were the chicks, piled up together, and occasionally stretching up their tiny heads and moving around. Then the mom flew off and Papa came over and fed tiny scraps to the chicks.
In the weeks ahead, both parent falcons will bring food to feed the chicks as they grow, and eventually, Falconcam viewers will get to see the chicks moving around and flapping their wings to build up their muscles in preparation for fledging – leaving the nest and learning to fly and hunt on their own.
The nesting box is located on a 14th floor ledge at One Capital Center, the office building at 10th and Main streets. The nest box has been used by once-endangered Peregrine falcons each spring since 2003; the spot mimics the high, steep cliffs falcons use in the wild, and generations of falcons have now been successfully reared there.
Peregrine falcons had essentially disappeared from Idaho in 1974, but the Peregrine Fund’s captive-breeding program started releasing them back into the wild in 1982. Eight falcons were released in downtown Boise in 1988 and 1989; there are now at least two dozen breeding pairs in the state. The Peregrine falcon was taken off the endangered species list in 1999.
The Falconcam is sponsored by the Peregrine Fund, Idaho Department of Fish and Game, and Fiberpipe Data Centers; you can watch live here.
