Tragedy and First Flight

Boxer's First Flight

Concerned Parent

Shelly and I traveled downtown(July 3) expecting to take a brief look at the newly fledged Peregrine Falcons. When we arrived at the Hotel Utah, we heard this news, excerpted from the "Salt Lake City Falcon blog

Well today started out with such celebration, having two of the youngsters fledge within 90 minutes of each other. Sadly, Macy took a long, strong flight off the Beehive and crashed into the Key Bank building around lunchtime, dying on impact we believe. Here's the news I have from Bob after talking with him tonight:

- The first bird out of the nest was nicknamed "Primo", who landed on the admin building and somewhat hung out on the north end until sometime this evening when he flew over to the west side of the tall church office buiilding, ending up on the ground and was banded. Bob is fairly sure Primo is a male, but because the male band was a smidge tight, he chose to band him with a female band (females normally have larger leg bones than males and is how they can be told apart). Primo was taken up to the top of the Beehive around 9pm and when I was talking to Bob, he was still there 'dinking around' and hopefully will stay put for the night.

-The second bird out of the nest was nicknamed "Macy" who after a very strong first flight ended up over on the ledge above the Macy's sign at City Creek shopping center just across South Temple street. Bob said that mid-morning Macy flew over to the area above Kneaders and got herself down in the shade where Bob was able to throw a towel over her and get her inside for banding. Definately female. They then took her to the top of the Beehive for release. She was put out on the west side and not long after Bob got down to the first floor he heard she had taken off heading back to the area where she was earlier. She flew straight in to the Key Bank building. 

I am waiting for a small writeup from Bob with his comments on today. As with last year, Bob's motto is 'we need to worry about the living'. The question does arise, whether there is anything we can do to help or prevent this type of thing from happening in the future. The truth is that the parents insist on nesting in the downtown area. Before this nest was provided, they were attempting to nest on parts of the building that were even more dangerous for the eyases. Thus, the box was installed to at least give them a chance at a successful hatch and fledge. Their natural settings would be granite cliffs which could be just as tough for young birds to learn to fly. Bob is fairly sure that bird number 3 will fledge in the morning. 

Turns out #3 did. We were about to leave when we heard that Bob was going up to the nestbox with hopes of capturing the bird and taking it to rehab to get checked out. Bob opened the trapdoor behind the nestbox, and after a few moments of cat and mouse, the bird took its maiden flight, landing on the LDS church office building. Moments later a frantic parent, who had been perched on a building opposite of the nestbox, flew off looking for her fledgling. She flew back and forth for about ten minutes and eventually located the chick. By that time Bob had retrived the bird and it was on its way to rehab. The bird has been dubbed "Boxer."