Clashing, Coupling, & Capturing A Band ID

Watchers spent a good part of the day staking out the area around the Midtown Plaza Tower checking on the activity of our two new resident Peregrines. With the recent news that the male has been identified as Archer, Mariah and Kaver's grandson by Freedom, it seems like interest in the downtown pair has been rekindled. Nearly a dozen local watchers showed up today, a good number given the early time of the season.

Our chosen locale was a mostly deserted parking lot at Broad and Chestnut. It provided a good view of the east and south sides of the Midtown tower as well as the fire escape on the Knights of Columbus building where the falcons are wont to hang out. In fact, upon my arrival a little after Noon I found Archer at the top of the steps, scratching and keeping an eye on his mate over on the plaza tower:
          

The first ten minutes were pretty quiet. I caught up with the morning's activity from Carol P, Kathy O and Dawn, who noted that in addition to mulitple witnessed mating episodes, the two falcons had been kept busy contesting with another falcon that wandered into the territory. Apparently this had happened more than once today. So I wasn't too surprised when Archer started kacking and his mate got into the air, pumping her wings with a will as she headed south past the Xerox tower:
          

Carol and Larry O'Heron alerted us to the presence of the third falcon at about the same time. The female ended up landing on top of Xerox while Archer pressed his attack against an adult female:


It took them some time, but working together our resident pair drove the intruder away to the southeast and out of sight. They both appeared after the pursuit, circling in the air:
     

The good weather made for some nice thermals. This kettle of hawks took full advantage:


A Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura) that wandered too close to the tower incurred Archer's wrath as well:
     

     

He returned to the fire escape following the chase, giving us a good look at him as he passed by:
     

          

Meanwhile, the female had taken a short flight of her own and ended up at the top of the northeast corner of the Plaza tower:


After a few minutes she called to Archer, and being a good mate, he obediently flew over and the two of them mated for the umpteenth time:
          

Archer floated down on his approach, then lifted off vertically, like an AV-8B Harrier jump jet. I'd never seen him end a copulation session that way. Usually he just flies down and away, so this was an interesting change. Maybe he caught a gust of wind at just the right time. Larry counted off the seconds during the encounter (out loud, no less) which lasted a hair over eight seconds. That's short by the standards Archer has set in the past, but maybe it just means he and the missus are getting more comfortable with each other...

In any event, back he flew to the fire escape for more sunbathing:


Then, the moment we'd been waiting for-- the female flew over and landed right next to Archer on the fire escape!
          

          

Bingo! We'd been waiting for an opporunity to see her at close range in good light for a while. Could a band ID be far off? Joyce, Lou and I all had our Canon SLRs and 100-400mm lenses. In addition, I'd brought my spotting scope, and I hurried to set it up. We waited eagerly, and when she lifted her leg to do some preening shutters clicked in earnest:


I shot over 100 frames, hoping for a clear look at the band in one of them. My camera's small LCD screen doesn't have sufficient resolution to allow me to see fine details of the image, even when it's zoomed all the way in, so I knew I'd have to wait until I got the images on my computer at home. In the meantime, Joyce and I climbed the lower levels of the fire escape to get a little closer to the falcon. For the next half hour we scrutinized her every move, snapping shots with each change in her position:


When she started to nap, I decided I'd taken enough pictures and climbed down. I grabbed a couple of shots of the two falcons sitting together on the fire escape before I left, though:
     

So, what was the verdict? Believe it or not, none of my images of the female's band was tack sharp, and none showed the full ID number in its entirety. In my scope I thought I'd gotten a good read on the number in the black part of her band, but there was actually too much daylight to see the character in the green. At home I reviewed the dozens of images carefully, zooming in and out. I finally took my most educated guess and sent my findings off to Lou and Joyce via e-mail. Lou too had trouble getting a clear shot, but luckily Joyce ended up with a clean look at the entire band! We've searched the Midwest banding database for a match without success, but that database is far from complete. We've also sent the information to some of our contacts for further research. Black/Green bands are used in the US, east of the Mississippi River according to the Peregrine Falcon Banding Protocol for North America, so we're confident we have a US bird. Her band doesn't match any of the birds banded in Rochester. Now it's just a waiting game until our contacts (hopefully) fill in the history of our new resident female.