06-25-2025 Falcon fledging update

Sorry – no photo today.  Fledging has been a long ordeal this year.  Dash fledged early on June 11 and was quickly grounded and brought to rehab. Although he was not injured, he was small and did not have flight feathers fully emerged. Then after a long week of baking in the hot sun, we finally got to see Dot make her first flight on June 18 – just as the storm arrived!  For the next week, Dot only made very short flights every couple days, always in the late evening!  However, she stayed airborne and was finally “encouraged” by Rebecca yesterday. Over the years, we have seen Rebecca utilize “tough love” and make her youngsters fly by enticing them to chase her as she carries food or actually swipe at them and force them off a perch, which is what she did to Dot.  It was effective and Dot is now flying more and looks strong.  Rebecca did take a couple swipes at some people on a nearby roof where Dot happened to be perched today.

We waited for a bit of a break in the heat and attempted to bring Dash home today.  He flew very well, but unfortunately, things did not go smoothly.  In the past, Rebecca always welcomed the juvies home after they were in rehab.  But she was not very welcoming to Dash today and made some aggressive dives at him.  He ended up grounded very quickly but does not appear to have any obvious injuries. Many thanks and kudos to Drew at WMU Medical School for spotting him and alerting us to the situation.  We will return him to rehab at Wildside Rehabilitation and Education Center where he will be assessed and observed to insure that he doesn’t have any head injuries.  He will then be placed with a falconer because it is not safe to return him here given Rebecca‘s behavior today.

I know some people have expressed disappointment that the posts have not been as frequent as they would like. Our commitment is to the safety of the birds themselves. If they are grounded or collide with a structure, there may only be minutes to intervene to get them to safety.  So, we spend many hours watching. A small group of five people has been on patrol from 6 AM to 9:30 PM for over two weeks. And in the heat this year, that is no small feat. Driving young Dash to and from rehab adds another 6 hours to the fun.  Please know that what would be truly disappointing to many of us would be to lose a young Peregrine because we were not onsite.  We always welcome volunteers who would like to help monitor the falcons (and maybe give yours truly more time to sit at the computer and write blogs).