You'd think peregrine falcons, if they had any sense, would prefer the luxury of a made-to-order nest box, nestled on the shores of Lake Ontario, to the cold hard ledge of an apartment building.
Not so, apparently, at least judging by the pair of peregrines who settled last year on the superstructure of Lakeview Generating Station. They managed to set up housekeeping there, despite the best efforts of officials from Ontario Power Generation and the Canadian Peregrine Foundation (CPF) to dissuade them with nets.
The building was to be demolished and nobody wanted any raptor fatalities on their consciences. The nest was unsuccessful, as it turned out, so the careful planning of a potential move of the chicks from a ledge high atop the power plant to the nesting box didn't have to come into play.
This spring Mark Nash, the voluble executive director of CPF, has been keenly watching the 120-ft. nesting box that OPG provided to protect the vulnerable raptors, who nest on cliff faces in the wild.
While the male returned to the site and showed lots of interest in it, the missus apparently doesn't hold with such new-fashioned digs. The pair of potential Lakeview tenants has now shown up on an apartment building ledge on Mill Rd. in Etobicoke, where detective work carried out through the binoculars by CPG officials has confirmed it is the same pair. CPG is now madly working with the condominium board and management there to make sure that the birds can build a nest and raise a brood.
"It's the first time in our recollection that a pair have established on a residential building in the heart of the city," says Nash.
But that doesn't mean that all is lost at Lakeview, he quickly adds. "We're still keeping a close eye on it. Many of the birds don't return until the end of April. A lot of the migrators have yet to come back to their territories. They're still far down south in Colombia and Southern and Central America.
If they find an undefended territory, like Lakeview, there's still a good chance a male will set up shop there "and try to claim a gal," says the group's executive director.
Meantime, things are progressing well at the other two nests in Mississauga. The year-round inhabitants of the Mississauga Executive Centre at 1 Robert Speck Pkwy. have successfully mated and a hatch should be upcoming in a few weeks.
At St. Lawrence Cement, a long-standing nesting site where some staff have been keeping a watchful eye for years, the birds "are down on eggs." They have moved house, to a different elevation in the huge complex, which is almost impossible to observe. Probably something to do with privacy regulations.
As exciting as word of the successful new nests is, Nash is even more revved up these days about a thoughtful corporate donation by Mike Reynolds, product manager in the systems security group at Panasonic Canada in Mississauga.
Earlier this spring, a camera that was a decade old at the Sheraton Hotel peregrine nest in Toronto died a natural death.
You might not think that the reality TV of peregrine voyeurism would get big global ratings but this version of Falcon Crest apparently resonates far and wide.
When the camera died, "I had 200 e-mails by the end of the day," says Nash. "By the end of the week I had 1600 e-mails, some of them very irate. Some were from places and countries that I didn't even think had electricity," he laughs.
At 2:30 a.m. in the morning, a frustrated Nash sent off an e-mail to Panasonic asking for assistance for the volunteer organization, which has no budget for cameras.
By 10:15 a.m. the next morning, Reynolds wrote back offering demonstration models that are going to bring web-cam viewing of the nesting sites — including the MEC locale in Mississauga — to a whole new level.
The old analogue system with its computer software and myriad potential breakdowns has now been replaced with a network IP camera. "It has two wires, one goes into the power and one into a network connection hooked into a high-speed line. We can now have real-time streaming live right to our web site," says Nash. "For us it's like going from the horse and buggy to an automobile."
Best of all is that people like Nash no longer have to jump into their cars in the midst of a frigid winter and drive up to 90 minutes to a nest site just to reboot a computer and get the cameras working again.
Reynolds says, "if Pansonic can help and it benefits everybody, why not?"
Of course, it didn't hurt that Nash invited Reynolds to a banding at the Sheraton Centre last year where the Panasonic executive could see the little balls of fluff, which seem to be all beaks and claws, get their travel identification.
After you see the squawking vulnerable babies up close and personal, it's hard to resist them, admits Reynolds. "I guess I'm a little soft at heart."