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4 downtown Youngstown peregrine chicks banded for tracking
Photo
Katie Byers, 4, of North Jackson helps Jennifer Norris, Ohio Department of Natural Resources research biologist, and Dan Wright, fish-management technician, band one of the four peregrine falcon chicks that live in a nest atop the Millennium Building in downtown Youngstown.
YOUNGSTOWN
The whereabouts of four newly hatched peregrine falcon chicks can be monitored now that state wildlife officials have placed identification bands on their legs.
The four chicks began hatching in early May on the roof of the 17-story International Towers building at 25 Market St. in downtown Youngstown, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
In a one-hour process Wednesday afternoon, state wildlife biologists removed the chicks from the roof, banded them in a 16th-floor staging area, where they squawked loudly, and returned them to the roof.
They determined that one of the chicks is male and named him named Cruze for the Lordstown-built car. Three are females, named Idora for the former amusement park, Crandall for the city park and Rayen for the former school.
The young birds are expected to make their first flights from the nest about three weeks from now, said Jennifer L. Norris, ODNR wildlife research biologist.
“We monitor the population pretty closely, and part of that monitoring process is we put bands on them to identify them from a distance,” Norris said of the threatened species of raptors.
The chicks are the offspring of Stammy, a male born in 2003 at the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning, and Strike, a female born in 2009 at the Terminal Tower in Cleveland. Strike was guarding the nest while the chicks were being banded, and Stammy was away, presumably hunting, Norris said.
“They were all in excellent health,” she said of the chicks banded here on Wednesday and of Strike.
Stammy is named for the Stambaugh Building in downtown Youngstown, where he and his previous mate, Stellar, had a rooftop nest for several years.
Stammy and Stellar also had previous unsuccessful nesting attempts at International Towers and the First National Bank Building and a successful nest at the Mahoning County Courthouse.
Stellar died last year shortly after she was found injured under the Market Street bridge. Thirty-six pairs of peregrine falcons are being monitored by ODNR, 19 of them in Northeast Ohio. The Youngstown nest is the only one recorded in Mahoning County to date.
Because of their renewed nesting success, peregrines were removed in 1999 from the federal endangered-species list. They were removed from Ohio’s endangered list in 2008 and are now listed as a threatened species in Ohio.
“They’ve adapted really well to city landscapes such as this one,” Norris said.
ODNR has installed a nesting tray filled with pea gravel on the International Towers roof to help prevent the ponding of rainwater at the raptors’ nest, which could make the eggs wet, cold and impossible to incubate successfully.
Stephanie Dyer of Poland, who regularly watches the peregrines here, said she first noticed Stammy with Strike in downtown Youngstown in January.
“They seem to be liking one another really a lot. They’ve been getting along since they first met,” Dyer said.
“They’ve been bringing food up to the nest tray every single day. She’s been providing well for them [the chicks], and Stammy’s always right there, just watching over her,” Dyer observed.
The state wildlife biologists went from the Youngstown nest to monitor a peregrine nesting site on a Laird Avenue water tower in Warren later Wednesday.