[bcbirdclub] Peregrine Search

From: "Roger Mayhorn" <rmayhorn@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: "BCBC Listserve" <bcbirdclub@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2011 01:22:03 -0500
During the past couple of years I have been in touch with Sergio Harding the 
Nongame Bird Conservation Biologist for the Virginia Department of Game and 
Inland Fisheries. Sergio is interested in knowing if any of the young Peregrine 
Falcons that have been hacked (raised and released) in the Breaks Interstate 
Park in the past few years have returned. In the past David Raines, Ed Talbott 
III and I have searched the park to see if a pair of the young Peregrines 
released there might have returned to nest. Last spring David found a couple of 
Peregrines in the park, one adult and one juvenile, but they were observed only 
a couple of times and evidently moved on.

Now the VDGIF wants to do a systematic survey of the park this spring to answer 
the question," Are there any Peregrines using the park? David Raines and I have 
agreed to help with the survey. It will consist of spending at least one day a 
week in the park, observing from three different vantage points along the gorge 
to watch for Peregrines. We will spend two hours at each vantage point. If the 
survey proves that there are no adult Peregrines in the park or vicinity, then 
the hacking of more young Peregrines might resume there. If adult Peregrines 
are found there, no young birds would be released because adult Peregrines 
would kill the young ones as soon as they were freed.

Anyone who would like to help with the survey is welcome to do so.

If an adult nesting pair is found in the park, then the study would move to a 
new phase, which would consist of finding the nest and monitoring it throughout 
the breeding season.
As I have mentioned before, the Towers, the large stone peak seen from the 
Breaks park restaurant, was the last known nesting site of the species in the 
state of Virginia in the early 1960's when DDT and other pesticides wiped out 
most of the raptors of the Eastern U.S.


Roger Mayhorn
Compton Mt
[bcbirdclub] Peregrine Search

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