 And we'll join us again in the fall. This is our last talk for this series. In September, we will have a talk from Roberta Hill on the invasive species affecting our lake waters. In October, Doug Hitchcock from Maine Audubon is going to address ethical issues around wildlife from many different angles, and I think we'll be fascinating. And in November, Patty Cormier is going to return, and we'll give a discussion on the particular characteristics of trees, why our leaves lobed, why as bark the way it is, etc. So we're hoping you can all join us for that. We hope to be live, but we will let you know. Tonight, we are continuing our series of bird success stories with Patrick Kark, who will discuss peregrines on Mount dessert and is also going to discuss some of the hawk watches and I think has maybe a few other things. He is an ornithogological ranger on the wonderful Mount Desert Island. Nick is doing our monitoring here and he has asked me to request that you save your questions till the end. Use the Q&A please and not the chat. And to remind everybody also, if you're interested, this is being recorded and will be available. So without any further taking time from Patrick, I will turn it over to Patrick Kark. Thank you for joining us Patrick. Thank you and thanks for the invite from Western Maine Audubon to come out and speak to everyone today. I'm very excited to talk about it. This raptor conservation in and around Acadia National Park is probably one of my favorite things to discuss. So I'm really excited to be able to give that presentation to everyone today. Before we get off, just before we begin, I just want to answer, we did get a question from Dan beforehand so I can just address that before we get into the presentation that you had two chicks at Jordan Cliffs and three at Valley Cove. Are the correct numbers for peregrine falcon fudge links from the year 2020. We'll get into the discussion there. One of our main sites, the precipice did fail. We don't 100% know for sure, but my best guess is we did get hit by some significant weather with a cold snap around the end of April last year, which is a pretty critical time for peregrine falcon fledgling success and the fact that if they had hatched out of those eggs, and then had a period of a couple of days of heavy rains and then close to freezing temperatures, that is probably what ended up causing them to fail. And although we saw a little bit of interesting behavior to see if they were going to remest it did not seem that they ever successfully remest it. And so we did have a failure at the precipice last year. But with that as we get into the presentation. First off, I just want to really talk or introduce you all to myself a little bit and why I'm so passionate about this topic. So of course my name is Patrick, and I hail from Colorado. And peregrines are the reason I'm out here in Maine today. Eight years ago, just after I graduated Colorado State University with a degree in zoology. I was lucky enough to come out to Acadia National Park and be the raptor intern. That is probably going to be the coolest job title I'll ever have in my life and it's only downhill from there. Being a raptor intern was amazing. It was an opportunity for me to begin science communication. I have a wonderful opportunity of viewing peregrine falcons in their natural habitat and of course sharing their success story. All across the world but specifically here in Acadia National Park to hundreds of visitors a day. I was lucky enough that that internship didn't turn into an ornithology ranger position for me. And I have been an ornithology ranger at Acadia for seven more years and it has been an amazing experience and I love that I can keep continuing to do that year in and year out. But of course today we are going to begin off by talking about the peregrine falcon conservation story here on Mount Desert Island. And really to understand that conservation story we'll just do a brief coverage of what caused the decline of peregrine falcons and other raptor species throughout North America. And that has everything to do with a chemical called DDT. DDT was a chemical that was invented just after or during World War II and it was found out to be an incredible insecticide and it was long lasting. It stayed on the crops in the fields and therefore protected the crops for much longer than current pesticides at the time could. However, that ability to be long lasting as we now know did end up contributing to the decline of raptor species. So if DDT laid on the environment it would degrade into another form of the chemical called DDT and that chemical started causing issues through a process called bio accumulation. We started to see DDT concentrations within birds skyrocket to the point where in peregrine falcons in particular the DDT concentrations became so high. It actually started to inhibit their ability to create calcium and that of course was very important for their ability to produce healthy eggs. In the bottom right picture here we do have two peregrine falcon eggs that because of that limit of calcium production, you would be able to pick up these eggs and just kind of pinch them closed with your fingers. This of course didn't give them great protection and we started to see no population recruitment for peregrine falcons and DDT was heavily sprayed throughout North America in the 1950s. But again that long lasting effect stayed in the populations and we started to see a decline in peregrine falcon numbers through the 50s 60s and into the 70s. And one of the big reasons why it was so unnoticed is the fact that this chemical didn't kill adult birds. If you had a peregrine falcon pair that lived near you during this time, you probably saw it in 1953 you saw it in 54 55 so on and so forth until eventually those birds would have died of, excuse me of old age. But because of these problem in the eggshells, no young falcons were being produced to replace those adults once they died off, and therefore very suddenly we saw a decline in the numbers. Eventually, a wonderful woman named Rachel Carson wrote a book called Silent Spring, and it was really one of the first documents to explore the idea of chemicals and the impact that we have on our environment and how that can cascade through a system. We had, you know, it was starting to be in scientific documents, but what, at least in my opinion why I deem Silent Spring so highly in regard to helping peregrine falcon conservation is this was one of the first times we saw science communication. Rachel Carson took this idea that had been found out in the scientific community, but presented it in a way that was available to the public. And through that public opinion was able to shift on DDT was banned for use in 1972 in the United States. Excuse me, and as continue to see little to no use in North America since that time. But at that point, the damage was done. A 1970 survey done throughout North America but highly focused on high density areas of peregrine falcons were only able to find minimal pairs in what we would still consider excellent peregrine falcon range. And unfortunately, that decline really hit a subspecies of peregrine falcon called falco peregrinus anatom to the point where that subspecies which is the eastern subspecies of peregrine falcon also was referenced as the duck footed falcon. It was extirpated from the wild. There were still some anatoms in captivity owned by falconers, but at least when it came to wild populations of the birds they could no longer be found. But through Silent Spring and Rachel Carson, and roughly a just strong push towards conservation efforts in the late 60s and early 70s. So the peregrine falcons were deemed an important species to bring back. We of course had the endangered species act, beginning here in the country as well. And in 1972 reintroduction began in the Chesapeake Bay area for peregrine falcons. Sorry about that. When it comes to reintroduction of peregrine falcons and having so such limited population throughout the country, we, and by we I mean the conservation agencies, National Park Service State agencies nonprofit and a lot of private falconers worked together to create a hacking program. And hacking is a term for raising peregrine falcon fledglings in captivity. In this case they grabbed peregrine falcons from around the world, including anatom subspecies that were falconer birds. And they started interbreeding all of the subspecies to kind of create a general falcon that would be best suited to be released in a variety of different locations. But with no adult birds to raise these chicks, humans started doing it themselves. Well, birds do have a critical time in their development where they imprint on usually the adult birds that are caring for them. And this imprinting is how birds get roughly what we call their self identity, how they decide what bird am I, what bird should I be hanging out with. To help keep peregrine falcon fledglings from imprinting on humans, we of course use really creepy peregrine falcon puppets to feed those little fledgings in those captivity. Until they reached roughly around three to four weeks of age, where they then be brought to hacking sects, and they started going on throughout a variety of areas of the country. In England and Maine and specifically we didn't begin hacking until 1984. And the reason why was, there was roughly little to no information on where should we even bring peregrine falcons back to. And so into 1983, the Resource Management Specialist Carol Shell here at Acadia National Park, and a College of Atlantic Professor William Drury work together to evaluate historic and potential area locations on the islands. Because of this work they did Acadia National Park was selected to begin a hacking program in 1984. The location they chose to hack in Acadia National Park was Jordan Cliffs, which we can see right in the center of the island there. And the reason they chose that cliff was first it was suitable habitat for peregrine falcons. But it also lied almost right in the center of two historic area locations here on the island, which are the precipice and valley cove in some sound. The peregrine Acadia National Park occurred in 1984, 85 and 86. This picture here is from the top of the Jordan cliff hacking site where they were beginning to release these peregrine falcon fledglings. And in those three years, the park released 23 peregrine falcon fledglings and we had 22 reach adulthood. Unfortunately, during that first year one of the fledglings did go missing. The park does not have does not really know what exactly happened. The best guess is that it fell out of the nest or the nest box area and therefore was just never found. But pretty successful to see 22 23 or 22 of 23 fledglings, at least fly away from the park that was pretty successful. And the reason why the park stopped in 1987 is because a sub adult Falcon was seen around Jordan clips. And that Falcon is a pretty big character in this story. Back then we still named our Falcons, and it just so happened that this Falcon was named Ganesh, and he was a male from the 1986 fledglings. And why we had to stop hacking is because Falcons can be very territorial towards each other, and sub adult Falcons are well known for attacking fledglings as they're learning to fly and so. Although Guinness showed up about three days before the fledglings were to arrive, they canceled the program and those fledglings were moved off to be hacked in other parts of the state. So our story with Guinness moves away from Jordan clips and in 1988 Guinness is spotted again at the cliffs of the precipice and those are the cliffs on the eastern side of Champlain Mountain on the island. And that's about it. He was seen that summer. He did attract a sub adult female to the cliff site. However, due to her not being old enough yet to be a mate. He hangs around for a couple weeks or so and then disappears. Well, in 1989 Guinness shows up again, and this time he attracts an adult female to the cliffs of the precipice, but no nesting occurs in 1990. Ganesh returns again is able to attract an adult female to the nesting location. We do not know if this was the same female from the previous year. And they do nest, however, due to a lake April storm, the nest does fail. But in 1991, Ganesh and another female Falcon, again, we don't know if it's the same one. They successfully raised the first three wild peregrine Falcon chicks in Acadia National Park since 1956. And that was a huge, huge success. I like just throwing this picture out this picture is from the cliffs of the precipice, and it has taken about six feet above the current nesting site that our peregrine Falcons are occupied. But I just see that and they have an amazing view from that nest site. Well, the precipice has been extremely successful since 1991. Ganesh actually was the male Falcon at that nest all the way up until 1998. And therefore, he was responsible and the different females throughout the time for getting a great start to the populations of peregrine Falcons in and around Maine. To this date, at least last year, 2020, the precipice itself as a nest site has produced 78 successful floods links. But what's even, what's another great thing about the peregrine Falcon recovery project here in Acadia National Park is that ever since 1991, the park has also been doing an interpretation program. And since 1998, which is the oldest stats I could find the peregrine Falcon watch program has been able to talk to over 390,000 visitors about peregrine Falcon conservation. And about the hard work that many nonprofits and government agencies did to bring these birds back to their historic ranges. The precipice is not the only place that peregrine Falcons nest here in Acadia National Park. They also nest now on the Jordan cliffs, the original hack site above Jordan pond, which is the top right picture. They also nest in some sound again one of those historic locations, which we can see in the bottom left over some sound. Every so often they do nest on Canada cliffs or echo cliffs, which is the bottom right hand picture next to Echo Lake. There's actually only ever been one year 2004 where we had a successful peregrine Falcon nesting site at some sound and echo cliffs. The best guess is they're just too close to host two pairs of peregrine Falcons most of the time. As a as a peregrine flies, they're roughly only about a mile apart and therefore too much competition and they probably keep driving themselves out. And most years what we do see in the general trend is that if a peregrine Falcon nest fails their first nesting on some sound, we then do see them retreat to the echo cliffs. And through having all of these nesting sites here in the park. As of 2020 160 peregrine Falcon fledglings have flown from Acadia, which is a huge number huge success story, and is one of pretty much the legacy of these. One of the things that we do see in the program is that bird peregrine Falcons continue to do so well here in this area, continue to do so well in the park and are still thriving in most places that they can be found here in the state of Maine. And when we do have the opportunity, we do like to go up into the nest sites to see possibly what our birds have been feeding on. And what's really fun about the Mount Desert Island peregrine Falcons is that they often do have seabird in their diet or shorebird. The Valley Cove pairs, historically speaking are eating goals a lot. And so we, including herring goals which actually are much larger than a peregrine Falcon in weight. The peregrine Falcons are resourceful. They're able to take down herring goals, but a entire body of a herring goal would be too much. So what we see is peregrine Falcons will actually tear off the wings, tear off the head, legs, and they'll just fly back with the chest back to the nest site or their cash sites. That's primarily because peregrine Falcons are pretty successful hunters. They really only have to spend time eating the high quality meat and of course in birds that is the breast of these herring goals. The precipice pair has often been known to bring back black kilomots, which is really interesting to see the black kilomots red feet hanging underneath the peregrines as they fly back to the cliffs. And then the Jordan Cliff pair seems to often prefer woodpeckers and they often we can find remains of woodpeckers, Downie, Harry. I don't think we've ever found Piliated, but also Northern flickers remains have been found in their nests. Another really fun fact about our Falcons here at the park is that our precipice pair is often known for feeding on those seabirds on Egg Rock Island, which is roughly two miles away from their nest site. And even more impressive is that Petit Manon Island, which is 10 miles east of their nest site. They have been documented sitting on the lighthouse, ready to pick off a variety of different shore birds and that are nesting out there on that island. This is a beautiful picture of one of our adult birds from 2017 at the precipice. What I've really enjoyed about our and following this peregrine falcons here at the Cape, the park, so closely is, is seeing where some of our birds have gone. And these are some of the banding details that actually have been recovered for our birds. And probably the most important or one of the most impressive ones was right there at the top. In 1994, we had a female that was raised on the precipice cliffs. And she was one of the first Falcons to nest in the city of Boston in 96 and 97 on the Christian Science Church building. But she lived a long life she was found dead in 2011, which made her 17 years old. And what we say is kind of the average lifespan for an adult peregrine falcon is 14 to 15 years. So she was definitely one of the older ones out there. And that is truly, truly was a remarkable bird. We also saw a lot of our birds come back to the island, but also spread out into our local states. We had a bunch of pairs begin breeding in New Hampshire and Vermont. Another one that's striking to me and really helps show why peregrine falcons are named peregrine. That's actually Latin for wanderer. In 1997, one of our males fledged in the summer and then decided to fly all the way to Cuba. It seemed to spend the new year in Cuba and that is where he was found. And then probably the most recent kind of success story is that in 2018, one of the females from Acadia National Park was found nesting in Lewiston, Maine. Which was really exciting for us here to follow that story and I myself happened to go down there at one time to go check in on her one more time. And it was really neat to see that bird successfully nesting out there in Lewiston. But the reason we are able to have this data about what birds is because we've also been engaging in a long term banding effort here at the park. Since 1991, we unfortunately haven't been able to do it every year but when we get the opportunity, and we have the right weather and the right timing, we do our best to band all of our peregrine falcon fledgling chicks here in the park. And that's an important thing to note. And why it's so kind of difficult is we have about a three day window when we can ban peregrine falcon fledglings. And that's when they're 21 to 24 days old. If we are to go up there too early, their legs aren't big enough yet for the jewelry to go on their legs. But if they're older than that, you know, 25, 26, 27. What happens is, that's when their instincts kind of changes of what they need to do if danger presents itself. You know, from 24, from when they hatched 24 days old, when a threat is introduced, they just sit there. They hope that the parents are around to come deal with whatever is harassing these birds. But around that 26, 27 day mark, they start to become a little more mobile. And at that point, when a danger is presented, there is a higher likelihood that they might jump, causing them to fall out of their nest and possibly die and or become lost. The adults aren't able to continue feeding it. So we always do our best to make sure we're in that 21 to 24 day range when we go up there with the climbers to grab the birds. These birds have a very exciting couple hours in their lives in store when we do show up. They get picked up from their nest sites, which as we can see here in the left picture can be some ledges that are just a couple of feet long. And they go on a ride. They get sent up in these bags, all the way up to the tops of the cliffs where we have a staff up there ready to take measurements. We do a site check on the birds health to see if they have many, you know, mites or lice or any kind of visible injury that we can see. And then they get their jewelry put on. And here at the park we do put two bands on these birds when we bands on this bird's foot on the left foot hour right. You'll see the standard federal bands. This is roughly just a serial code in which is identifies the bird, and these often get reported usually only when a bird's found dead. And what we also put on it on the right leg is a state band. For the core for Maine, that is a black over green band. So the color combination can tell you what state. And then there's nice big white letter and numbers that we hope sometimes when perched the spotting scopes are really nice cameras are able to pick out those letters and number combos and be able to report those so without having to find a dead bird we can still get information on where our falcons are hanging out. But banding is not the only kind of monitoring that we continue to do for peregrine falcons. And in that case for all raptor species because most raptor species also showed a decline during this time of DDE spraying throughout North America. And that other way we monitor raptor populations is through hawk watches. And that's here at the part that is our Cadillac Mountain Hawk watch. Well hawk watches began pretty early on hawk mountain. In 1934, I believe, ran the first hawk watch and hawk mountains very famous for conservationists going there and starting to work on changing a aspect or changing a hunting practice that was going on on that mountain range where they would shoot raptors in the fall and they were able to successfully petition out this hunting act throughout that range and actually change it into, you know, the hawk mountain sanctuary where they now count migrating raptors. And so there were, there were hawk watches starting to pick up in different parts throughout North America. And you can tell about 1974 where the hawk migration associate of North America was found, founded, and this was an organization that started to take all these individual hawk watches, and started to bring a place where all their data would be integrated and brought together. So therefore, all this data that was coming in from these sites could be seen as one massive look at the raptor population here in North America. Well here at Cadillac Mountain, we have the opportunity to view these 12 species. Starting from left to right, top to bottom, we have turkey vultures, bald eagles, osprey, northern Harriers, Cooper's Hawks, Sharpshin Hawks, American kestrels, Merlins, Broadwing Hawk, Redtail Hawks, Northern Goss Hawks, and Peregrine Falcons. We will definitely see those 12 species every year. We also have the opportunity on that to catch a little more rare species coming through, golden eagles every so often. Pretty exciting time was in 2016, we had a Swainson Hawk show up at the Cadillac Hawks, which was a very exciting day. But we've been counting these birds up there at the Cadillac Hawk Watch since 1995. And so we'll be going into our 27th year of counting here this year. We have been an active Hawk Watch site throughout that time frame. And what makes us unique is because of a joint partnership between the park and Scoutic Institute. We actually have a site that has some of the highest coverage that isn't one of the main sites like Hawk Mountain, or some of the ones run by Hawk Watch International. And we sit there on that mountain and we count migrating raptors. These are the top three raptors that we'll see on top that mountain, Sharpshin Hawks, and American Kestrels will definitely be usually number one and number two. However, Broadwing Hawks are pretty, their, your chance of seeing high numbers of them are very dependent on the weather. So we often average probably somewhere from 300 to 600 each year. But in certain years, when the winds are right, the weather's been favorable for us, maybe not other Hawk Watch sites. Those are days where we'll see thousands of Broadwings come through, which is pretty common for Hawk Watches farther south. But because we're so far north, we just don't have the opportunity to see as many birds coming by. So those can be some pretty special days when we get those big Broadwing Kettles come through. But one of my favorite things to look at when it comes to our Hawk Watch data is we can also see the recovery of these species that, you know, conservation agencies have been working so hard to bring back to their historic ranges. So the peregrine falcon one, we can see we do average almost double, if not more than what we initially started seeing in 1995, and the first couple years, which is a good sign. Definitely isn't as dramatic because peregrine falcons do have much more limited nesting habitat throughout the, throughout the countryside than bald eagles do. But the bald eagle numbers are striking. Since 1995, you'd see that we saw zero for the first couple years and very small numbers for the next decade. But eventually as bald eagle numbers started to recover to so did their flights past Cadillac Mountain, and we now see very healthy numbers of bald eagles come through the Cadillac Hawk Watch every fall. And what's really special about the Cadillac Hawk Watch in my opinion is truly the experience. It's a wonderful group of people that hang up there. The volunteers that we have here at the Cadillac Hawk Watch are top notch and amazing and create such a wonderful environment for us Rangers who count out there as well as other volunteers from Scoot against to, and more than hundreds of visitors that also come by the Cadillac Hawk Watch each year. And often, when you go to other Hawk Watches, you're looking up because that's where birds are passing by. But because of Cadillac Mountain being so unique is the tallest mountain on the eastern seaboard. We look up or very rarely do we look up. For us, the birds, we actually get a look straight ahead of us, and actually down. When I first came here to Acadia in 2014, I had to find a new raptor book because I'd been so used from identifying them from the underside that identifying a Cooper's and a Sharpshoe Hawk would be very different when you only ever saw the top of it. And that goes for a lot of these raptor species. And so it was a really, really unique experience to see these birds in a different way than we usually do. And we get some wonderful opportunities to get some beautiful looks at these birds coming by, but probably my favorite thing about our Hawk Watch because we're positioned so uniquely along the coast. We get all these birds often flying within 50 feet of us on top of this mountain ridge. All 12 of those species from Northern gosh Hawks to American kestrels that we see here. I've all passed within my head by 50 feet, and it is a truly, truly amazing thing to see those birds so close on their migrations that might be taking them all the way down to South America. And that is just truly, truly remarkable. And so, as we kind of finish up this presentation today on the peregrine falcons here at Acadia and the Hawk Watch. For everyone out there who is listening today I invite you to come join us on the Cadillac Hawk Watch in the fall or come by and hang out with us at the precipice in June and July, and really have a beautiful place to come in, watch these birds. Learn about them, learn how to ID them, hang out with some amazing people that share the same passion as we all do and our love for birds. And it truly I would love to see all of you come by Cadillac Hawk Watch this fall. Feel free. If any of you'd like to take down my email address here. If you have any questions about birding in Acadia National Park or Acadia National Park in general, I am always ears to help answer those questions. And with that, I'd like to thank you all for joining me today to learn about Acadia's peregrine falcons story as well as our Hawk Watch. Thank you. Makes me want to get outside. Hello, Cal. That was really cool. Thank you, Patrick. We have a few questions coming in and folks if you're watching and you want to have questions for Patrick, please put them in the Q&A box. We'll start here. Which of the two migrations I think spring or fall is question which of the two migration sees the largest number of raptors. So for us specifically here at Acadia, we're just a fall Hawk Watch. We don't do a spring watch from there because at that point, the coast that part of the coastline isn't as much as a funnel, it's more raptor species filtering out from the Appalachian and the coast farther south. And so therefore we just don't see the same numbers to count there. We're definitely a fall Hawk Watch. So coming in from the Canadian Maritimes and Eastern Canada, that's only have the best time to see the most amount of raptors. I do believe Bradbury Mountain though down south in Maine is a spring Hawk Watch. And so they are, they, that's another great place to see migrating raptors in the spring. And they're going right now folks are down in the, that's in Poundall, I believe. Bradbury Mountain, and a sort of follow up question for that from Mary Jane is what are the dates of the Acadia Hawk Watch, the Cadillac Mountain. So we always do our Hawk Watch from the last training usually going on the second to last week of August by, by the last week of August, all the way through the end of October is our our Cadillac Mountain Hawk Watch. You will find some intrepid volunteers out there the first couple days of November, if the weather's okay, but it is a that's our main timeframe. I would also on top of that say our peak kind of our peak day every year averages around September 14. So if you're really trying to eye good time to come to the park to see a good amount of raptors that week around September 14 is a great time. When do your snowy owls show up up there. The snowy owls tend to show up the earliest I've ever seen one is the last week of November. Okay. All right, so it's a little overlap there. Unfortunately, they tend to show up right when we close the road to the top of the mountain. They're smart that way. A little more strenuous to go see them. Mary Jane asks about bald eagle migration and where they go. She said she thought they were year round residents. Well, for us along the coastline, they are. Many of our bald eagles are year round residents and that's because our bald eagles habitually feed from the ocean or they feed from water that is not freezing throughout the winter. But there's many bald eagles that are breeding on freshwater lakes and ponds and streams and rivers throughout the northern parts of Maine, Canada, throughout the entire country roughly. And those birds, we do see migrations of their numbers down south to freshwater, which they're used to feeding on to the point where they're unfrozen. That makes sense. Another migration question is which non raptor species are seen in greatest numbers during the hot watches. That's a great question. We do. We do do our best to pay attention to everything coming by. Including butterflies and migrating butterflies and dragonflies. We do our best to count them to very cool. I mean, we don't see too many songbirds or many of the other bird species because they tend to migrate at night, while raptors are primarily are ones that come through the day. But we definitely do see some large flights of swallows and night hawks sometimes come through during the day, which is really fun to see. One thing that really caught me off guard one time is every so often we have will it's show on top up on Cadillac Mountain. And I was like, this is interesting, you know, will it shore bird, what are you doing here, but actually young ones in the fall and they're almost always immature will it's will eat the berries. So they show up and they start eating a lot of the mountain crowberry that's still left over in the fall on tops of our summits, as they're on their southernly migrations. And so it's pretty fun to see. Very cool. Still got a bunch of questions out here one from Diane. She asked about you mentioned that sometimes the babies will fall and the parents could still. Yeah, what happens when a fledgling falls out of the nest appearance. Try to keep keep things going or what happens. Yeah. Um, so it actually happened here in the park in a predates my time but from Rangers I've overlapped with in 2013 we actually had a peregrine falcon fledgling at age. And it happened around 1617 days fell out of its net so prior to it being ready to be a fledging or even start jumping around, but it happened to fall only about 12 feet, and it landed on another ledge and although it was outside the nest site the adults were. I mean these adults have such a strong tie to the nest site. So like if a chick falls out. That's kind of usually could spell the end if it's far enough. But this one just happened to be long enough maybe it maybe a bagged loud enough, but it was able to keep the adult attention that although it still had a couple siblings in the nest site, they still kept feeding it until it was able to jump its way become mobile enough that it jumped its way back into the grape site on the cliff. That's fascinating. Great. I have a question here from Diane about what falcons eat to the eat squirrels and other mammals. Actually, if I could follow up to I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how they, how they hunt. Yeah, definitely. So, I'd roughly say peregrine falcons have about a 95% diet of birds. They are designed to eat birds. I won't say 100% is because when they're young and they're learning how to fly we do see them try and catch dragonflies and butterflies on the wing. And then also in populations where there's large bat emergencies at night we do see peregrine falcons eat bats as well. But primarily peregrine falcons eat other birds. They are from small songbirds, you know, from song sparrows and gold finches all the way, which are just a little bit of a snack to as large as herringgoals kind of on a basis. I've personally witnessed a peregrine falcon strike a great blue herring. And actually, I also think there's a, I think there's like a YouTube video out there of someone seeing a falcon rebird doing the same thing as well. And I never knew if this was a faltering bird or not, but it did strike a great blue herring. So they definitely focus in on birds, primarily in regards to how they hunt birds. I mean, we can see that in their speed, right. So peregrine falcons are the, as far as we know the fastest animals on the planet, where they can often dive over 150 200 miles per hour. The fastest peregrine falcon ever clocked was 270 miles per hour. That was some crazy circumstances they had taken it up in a plane and had a chase after a pigeon, but pretty remarkable and put a little accelerometer backpack on it. It's still remarkable to see a creature reach those speeds that's that that's faster than human freefall. So if you jump a skydiver jumping out of the plane that peregrine falcon would have beat them to the ground by 10s of seconds. And that speed that is a peregrine falcons hunting strategy they circle above, and then they use their incredible vision that raptors have to spot birds flying underneath them. And then eventually they'll lock on. They'll go into what we call a stoop, where they will fold their wings they dive they reach these incredible speeds. And what's really cool about raptor vision, and in particular peregrine falcons is they have binocular vision, or excuse me, monocular vision, not binocular vision. But what it roughly means is they actually have two focal points in their eyes, one for long distance and one for short distance. We now know this because of slow motion cameras, what as a peregrine falcons closing in on a bird, they'll actually tilt their head to go from their long distance vision to their short distance vision that allows them to kind of strike with better accuracy. So how they strike also changed, you know, we kind of used to think that they used to punch the prey out of the area, or punch the prey on the back of the neck, trying to break the back or the neck to just kill the birds instantly from the collision. So slow motion cameras again, we now know that that also just doesn't make sense right if you punch something was at high speeds is a good chance of breaking your digits. They actually lock their hands out and they'll lock the fingers out and they strike with an open palm, or what we would call upon us an open talent, right onto the backs of the birds, hopefully to kill them instantly. And then usually follow it to the ground once it's been killed. And in some cases if it's still wounded, they will, they have a little notch in their beak that they'll use to sever the spinal cord of the bird once it's on the ground, and then either proceed to eat it there or they will carry it off. What we're talking about Falcons is they will cash food on the cliff face as well, which is pretty unique for a rabbit. Thank you. From Dan ring, can you give us an idea of how the nesting is going this year. Yeah. I don't have any numbers yet on fledglings or not, we tend to be pretty non invasive all of our monitoring is done from a long distance through spotting scope. We have to wait till the, you know the snowy little fur balls work their way to the edges of the cliff and we're able to count them all at the same time. But we do have active nest sites at the precipice at Jordan cliffs and Valley Cove once again this year. Cool. Congrats. When banding the chicks do you ever have to worry about the parents being protective and trying to defend the chicks away from the banders that definitely they are. It's definitely laughed. It's a paragraph Falcon screeching is definitely going on constantly as it's as the banding opportunities are going on. However, they're smart. I mean, they're not. They realize that striking a hundred and 80 pound person isn't often going to necessarily end up so the well so they often do a lot of bluff diving. So you really don't have to worry too much about them striking but they will. And so of course the climbers are wearing helmets because they do know that the back of the head is where they want to hit because that's what they hit when they're having at birds as well. And so one of the best ways to keep Falcons from diving is by having someone looking at them and or painting an eye on the back of your climbing helmet because they do recognize that I you know this shape of an eye means that things looking at me and therefore has a chance to retaliate. Another thing you'll see them some climbers do is they'll put a little flower or they'll take something on top of their helmet that kind of gives the bird something else to strike that won't harm the climber but also harm the bird if it hits it. Very cool. Diane asked again about hunting when placed in the nest at four weeks. Yes, are they ready to hunt on their own. So this may be talking about the Hacks birds or. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we took a gamble. I mean when we did these conservation, there was no way for us to teach these birds how to hunt. They're not going over the edge, but that's roughly it we could you know we're not going out there skydiving with the bird next to us catching something out there it's not going to be possible so we, we really hope that there was enough instinct in these birds to learn how to hunt on their own, and luckily, they were. But on the flip side, today we do still see adults teach the young. On the edge, which is about, or once we consider them fledglings, which is roughly four to five weeks after they're hatched. They go through a period of learning how to fly and then once they're flying, you see the adults teach them things. Again at the press, you know the precipice beautiful place to see it all happen and occur in real time. You'll often sometimes see the adults will come back and they'll lead the birds on the young on chases to catch the, to catch the food. And then as they get better at that you'll see them drop it, and they'll make the young catch the food out of the air as kind of a way to teach them how to hunt successfully. Fascinating. What cool birds. Two questions left I think we're going to end right on time here. Donna asks how climate change is affecting these raptors, she says the raptors, which could be peregrines or larger than that. Well luckily, luckily for these raptors in all honesty climate change is probably helping them in a lot of regards, especially in the change of bald eagles. As we see bald eagle numbers are still climbing throughout many locations, and that has a lot to do with, and what we'll see throughout a lot of bird species and what is detrimental to some is that generalists tend to thrive better in adverse conditions as things are changing rapidly. And bald eagle is a definition of generalist. They, you know, historically we'd say can fish and climate change does help with the fact that water doesn't freeze as consistently now so you'll, they won't have to go on long migrations as longer migrations as far so that's definitely going to help them have higher survivabilities. They also are great. We actually have a big issue with our bald eagles here feeding on loom chicks. In 2015 we actually lost every loom chick on the island of bald eagle predation. They've been doing a little better recently, but it's definitely an issue. So bald eagles are roughly doing pretty well so far. In terms of peregrine falcons. Again, they eat birds but they can eat a variety of birds. So they're not like tied to a specific one that if it disappeared, we might see the peregrines drop off because of that kind of like the link snowshoe here cycle ecological cycle. But the big issue we have, if we, if we remember my kind of precipice nesting success story there, we have seen three more failures in the last, in the last 10 years than we, that's three times as much as we saw in the first 20 years, roughly. And that primarily, at least in my opinion is due to more, not as predictive weather more frequent kind of freak storms later into the spring, which is going to be the most impactful to the success of the falcons nesting, because they don't have a nest and specifically bald eagles. They have nice big stickness water drains really nice from a stickness. And that's on cliff faces on dirt on gravel. And so if you get puddles of water there, and it's cold out the puddles are just going to sit there. And if that's sitting on the eggs or the new born. That's where you see a lot of failures. Interesting. So, I'll do two additional I mean to one quick one and sort of related question your bald eagle question. Are there any predators that go after peregrines or their babies. Certainly the babies of course are, we would say many things can eat a peregrine falcon baby snakes are sometimes an issue of getting up into the nest sites. But truly for peregrine falcons we kind of look at adult on adult interactions, great horned owls are the only thing that I would say are a predator of peregrines. And that is because peregrines king of the skies during the day. They see just like us at night, and great horned owls are able to pick them off if they don't, you know, choose good roosting spots are aware enough during the night. Just another piece of meat at night. That's right. All right, and just one final one from Dan ring asked will the peregrine falcon watch be held at the precipice parking lot again. We are planning to do it this year. The new staff is just coming on. There will hopefully be trainings by the end of May and so by the last weekend of May into June. As far as I have knowledge now of course, in this world we are now things can change very quickly. But right now we are planning on having a peregrine falcon watch at the precipice again. Fantastic. Well that does it. I think we're still there and want to say a quick goodbye. But Patrick, thank you so much for coming on and teaching us about these awesome birds. I want to just run outside right now and go find some of my own. Thank you so much for the work you do and congratulations on on helping these birds come back. Thank you so much and hopefully you all again come out and see some of them. That's a great time. All right, take care everyone have a good night. Bye.