Our mild January this year was a relief to many humans, but it was a disaster for the urban peregrine falcons of southern Ontario.
Not since the peregrine breeding program began in earnest in 1995 have so many nesting sites failed.
Weather was responsible for disrupting the breeding cycle and resulting in fewer eggs being produced and fewer eggs hatching, according to Mark Nash, who heads the Canadian Peregrine Foundation.
The nesting site that the raptors have used on the superstructure of the Lakeview Generating Station was back in the bird-breeding business this year and hopes were high when four eggs were found.
But alas, the bad luck that has consistently dogged the site, where many hatchlings have been born but none had survived until last year, struck again.
Nash was elated when he visited the site last month and found three eggs had hatched and a fourth was in process. The fourth youngster was “pipping,” poking a hole in the egg to make his way into the world. Nash took many pictures of the process.
A few days later, two of the three chicks were dead in the nest, which is highly unusual and there was no sign of the mother, which is even more unusual. “The male was inattentive and we were very confused,” said Nash. “We've never had mortality like that. It was very suspicious.”
The mystery was solved when a female sub-adult, or a teenager in our terms, was spotted in the area.
Foundation officials surmise that the intruder either killed or drove off the adult female and has taken over the territory. “Unfortunately, we've seen this on many different occasions,” said Nash. Since she's sexually immature, there won't be any successful Lakeview breeding this year. Not only that, but it often takes a breeding pair a couple of years to successfully raise young when they do set up housekeeping.
In a similar incident last year, Nate the Great as he was known, the St. Lawrence Cement peregrine who became famous as one of the first to carry a radio transmitter and help track the species' movements, was killed by a younger male.
There is good news for Lakeview though. The generating station is being demolished, but the falcon incubator program will live on, in a new and better form.
Ontario Power Generation (OPG) has constructed, at its own cost, an 80-foot tower that has been carefully sited with a south, south-east orientation on the waterfront, several hundred metres south of the Lakeview buildings that are to be demolished.
“It has a lakeside view, one that would be envied by many people living in condos in downtown Toronto,” joked Nash. They might not be so crazy about the pea gravel floors. That feature, however, will be a chick magnet to the urban-raised falcons, along with the sides and roof of the 10-ft. high nesting box that will sit on top of the tower.
The tower is the first of its kind in Canada and has even been designed with the future in mind. If the Lakeview site is ever sold and the location of the nesting box becomes a problem, it can be taken down and re-erected on the site, or elsewhere.
At a time when there's been a lot of bad news for the Foundation, including the failed nesting sites, the closing of a critical small animal clinic at the University of Guelph that treated injured falcons and dwindling interest in supporting the program by the Ontario government, the Lakeview initiative comes as welcome news.
So does the fact that the Foundation is now talking with developers about buildings that would be constructed with falcon-breeding in mind in the first place.
“It would be great if we could make these places peregrine-friendly in their design," said Nash. “It wouldn't cost any more to have the appropriate ledges facing south and southeast. All we need is a little 3 by 6 ft. ledge somewhere out of the way. It's a really simple, easy thing to do.”
How about retrofitting someplace like, say, the clock tower of the Mississauga Civic Centre which isn't used regularly anyway, for a demonstration program?
That would discourage the pigeons that proliferate at City Hall (I'm not talking about the good citizens coming to pay their taxes) and could become a tourist attraction.
That would be perfect. A hawk in the mayor's office and falcons in the belfry.