If you asked kids to name a scary time of the year - they might answer Halloween. Ask any adult and they might respond - tax season! Well I have a new one for you - peregrine fledging season!

Take a look at photograph 1 and you'll see how the Waukegan/webcam birds are getting ready to fledge. The flight feathers are completely in with only a small amount of down left on the top of the head. The birds are very active at this time - doing a lot of wing flapping and running about.

It's that first flight that gets many an inexperienced bird into trouble. For the peregrines, it's generally a nice glide down to another ledge. Sometimes that means the fledgling goes all the way down to the bottom. It might be fine for a cliff-dwelling peregrine to sit on the river bank for awhile. In the city, it's a problem.

Usually grounding will only happen at one or two or eyries - with it typically happening to the first to fly, and more often it being a male. I kid around and say that it's because the females are smarter and wait to see how it works, and where not to go, but it's more because the males being smaller grow faster and are ready to fly first. (I'll have to looks at my records one day - it probably happens equally between the sexes.)

It's an anxious time for the people watching an eyrie - harder perhaps on the adoptive moms & dad than on the falcons themselves. But what happens is we watch, and if they do land on the street we retrieve the bird, take it to the zoo to make sure it hasn't fractured anything, and then return it to the nest. The majority of the time that works great. Occasionally we do loose a bird, but keep in mind that raptor mortality that first year is over 60%.

This year has been hard on some of our resident adult birds. While banding the Wacker birds, one of the building engineers pointed out to us that the adult female, Dory, had an injured eye (photograph 2.) Also, earlier this month the adult female (Sarah) from the Evanston pair was retrieved off the streets after dislocating her wrist. I'm not sure how either injury was sustained. Injuries can result from territorial fights or from a building collision while chasing prey or some other such thing.

While Dory seems to be coping with her injury, Sarah is in rehab. Meanwhile, the Evanston male (Joel) has been taking care of the young on his own (photograph 3) but is now down to 2 chicks out of the original 4. He should be able to raise the remaining 2 on his own. It'll be awhile before the Evanston birds are ready to fledge but as our other birds start, we'll all be keeping our fingers crossed that things go smoothly.