Falcons are movin’ on up in downtown Youngstown

milliken@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

A peregrine falcons’ nest in the city’s downtown has moved up from a lowly fourth-floor window ledge at the Mahoning County Courthouse on Market Street to a lofty perch atop the 17-story International Towers apartment building diagonally across the street.

“It’s all about vantage point,” said Jeremy Byers, wildlife area manager for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

“Naturally, peregrine falcons nest on cliffs, and the higher buildings better replicate that situation,” Byers said, explaining the birds’ upward mobility.

Byers said he went to the south tower roof of the apartment building at 25 Market on April 8 and found the adult female, Stellar, incubating four brownish-orange eggs, which he believes were laid during the last week in March. The nest is on a rooftop dominated by an array of communications antennae.

Because of increases in the peregrine population, the federal government upgraded peregrines in 2008 from endangered to threatened species status.

The eggs, which appear to be in good condition, are likely to hatch during the last week of this month or the first week in May, Byers said.

With Stellar was her mate, Stammy, who is named after the Stambaugh Building, where the pair nested at the 12th floor rooftop level for several years, Byers said.

After leaving the Stambaugh Building, the pair made an unsuccessful nesting attempt last year near the top of the 17-story Metropolitan Tower before nesting in a sheltered recess atop the courthouse’s front facade colonnade.

Accompanying the peregrines’ nesting at the courthouse was a notable reduction in the number of pigeons on that building, courthouse workers observed. Peregrines catch ducks, pheasants, pigeons and small birds in flight.

Read the full story Monday in The Vindicator and on Vindy.com.