Most city dwellers grow weary of slushy streets and impassable sidewalks, but snow doesn't ruffle the feathers of at least one Downtown resident.

Scout, the peregrine falcon who lives atop the Rhodes Tower, continues to feast on the fruits of an urban jungle.

For a bird of prey in winter, there's no better place to live than a big city.

"For one thing, it's a little warmer in the city than the outlying areas," said Donna Daniel, a wildlife biologist and falcon expert with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

"And with so much snow on the ground, falcons would certainly have it better than a suburban red-tailed hawk or an owl this time of year."

With long wings and short tails, falcons are built for speed. They hunt from the air, targeting birds in flight ranging from ducks to pigeons.

Hawks and owls, on the other hand, tend to have shorter wings and longer tails for maneuvering through trees and underbrush, and pouncing on prey.

While such raptors also eat birds, they favor mice, rabbits and other small mammals on or near the ground.

Snow cover makes finding enough food a major problem for most raptors, Daniel said.

Peregrine falcons -- cliff-dwelling predators -- were nearly wiped out by the 1970s because of the pesticide DDT in their prey.

Ohio, along with other Midwestern states, introduced an initiative in the late 1980s to support the species, releasing young birds in the wild and building nesting spots atop bridges and office buildings.

The first nesting pair in Ohio made downtown Toledo its home in 1988, Daniel said, while the first pair in Columbus settled atop the 629-foot Rhodes Tower in 1993.

Scout, a female, is wintering alone atop the building. Her previous mate, Orville, died in July after being hit by a car near Rich and Town streets.

Biding her time until spring, when one or more males will probably arrive and vie for her affections, Scout passes the time sitting, hunting and sleeping.

One of the raptor's favorite Downtown dining spots, Daniel said, is the vicinity of the Scioto River, west of her perch.

"The river is like an interstate for birds -- so it's like a smorgasbord for falcons," she said.

"She's probably eating a couple of times a day."

[pics of the release here]

OKALOOSA ISLAND — A small crowd watched in silence as the peregrine falcon took flight on a clear Friday afternoon and landed in a nearby tree on Air Force property.

View a photo gallery of the falcon being released »

“This is one of those moments that make our mission so worthwhile,� said Susan Leveille, director of education at the Emerald Coast Wildlife Refuge. “It’s days like this, to see him take off into the beautiful blue sky. It makes it all worth it.�

Some people feared the bird would never fly again after it was found with an injured wing last November.

“We’re not sure what happened to him,� said Stephanie Kadletz, animal health specialist with the wildlife refuge. “It appeared as if he had been shot, but we’re not sure what happened.�

“We were told he was never going to be releasable,� added Amanda Wilkerson, the refuge’s director. “But we just didn’t give up on him.�

Refuge workers allowed the bird’s wounds to heal on their own and nursed it to better health.

Patrick Gault, a biologist at the Emerald Coast Wildlife Refuge, said he believes the falcon came from the Midwest or Canada and was passing through Florida during its winter migration.

Peregrine falcons were almost wiped out in the 1970s.

“It’s rare we get to see these birds in the wild,� Gault said. “A big reason to us on why to make sure this falcon was released is because they were almost gone. There was a point where there were only 700 left.�

http://nwfdailynews.emeraldcoastphotoswest.com/mycapture/folder.asp?event=947611&CategoryID=28208&ListSubAlbums=0    pics of the release here

The San Pedro nonprofit group charged with treating sick pelicans is suffering an affliction of its own: strapped finances.

That's because a cold and starving pelican eats a whopping 6 pounds of fish a day -- half its body weight.

Hundreds of brown pelicans turned up dead or ailing along the West Coast in January after what researchers said was a miscalculation: They strayed to the far northern edge of their range, stayed too long and ran out of food. When they came south, they found food scant here too.

So they turned up listless on beaches or begging for food in parking lots, and were rescued by San Pedro's Oiled Bird Care and Education Center.

The facility is run by the International Bird Rescue Research Center, which has a $1.1-million annual budget and is one of the largest in the state's network of groups that rescue birds affected by oil spills.

The group was able to save about two-thirds of the 435 pelicans it has treated so far at its two coastal centers, but the effort has meant shoveling out $11,000 a month for pelican all-you-can-eat seafood dinners.

"The good thing about pelicans is that they eat a lot," said spokesman Paul Kelway. "And the tough thing about pelicans is that they eat a lot."

Good, because ravenous pelicans recover quickly. Tough, because the cost of hundreds of pounds of frozen sardines every day at the San Pedro center has drawn down the group's reserves.

Pelicans "are built to stuff themselves," said Dave Jessup, a wildlife veterinarian who manages the state Fish and Game Department's Marine Wildlife Veterinary Care and Research Center in Santa Cruz. "They eat and gorge, and sometimes they can't fly very well for several hours."

The International Bird Rescue Research Center was formed in the 1970s to respond to oil spills. For years, it has relied primarily on state funds, oil-spill contracts and reimbursements from polluters.

But because this year's pelican malady was not caused by an oil spill, the organization has had to dig into its own coffers to pay for pelican care.

It has tapped the same donors repeatedly, and finally resorted to triage, Kelway said. "It's like having 200 Labradors turn up at your house at once," he said.

During a recent feeding at the center, the pelicans' appetite was like a gathering cloud.

Workers approached with buckets of sardines, and the big birds came to attention, yellow heads high, eyes as big as nickels watching every move.

The workers edged into the pens. The pelicans hop-hopped closer.

A worker sloshed sardines into a tub, then ducked.

Dozens of flapping, waddling pelicans surged forward, knocking each other with huge wings and stepping on an unfortunate gull in their midst. Stretching their necks, they used long bills like chopsticks, snatching fish six at a time and tipping back their heads to gulp them.

"Ridiculous birds," one worker muttered, watching.

In seconds, the fish were gone. A few pelicans lingered, disconsolate, staring into the empty tubs.

At the height of the pelican crisis, Kelway said, there were more than 200 birds at the San Pedro center, and people kept calling with more rescue requests.

Organizers had to tell some callers to wait. Volunteers were putting in 14-hour days, and funds were stretched thin.

This week, the calls began to wane at last, and the number of pelicans at the center dropped to 100. With time to assess, organizers are considering a new direction for bird rescues.

The pelican episode has made it clear that their efforts must expand beyond oil spill response, Kelway said.

The group has long aided injured birds. But now organizers want to establish a well-funded service for mass rescues of wildlife of all kinds, Kelway said. That means less reliance on oil spill money and more fundraising, he said.

The shift comes as other large die-offs unrelated to oil spills have increased in recent years, including those caused by algae blooms, he said. But there is another driver: public attitudes. "What was exposed here was a public expectation that someone will come take care of these animals," Kelway said.

In some ways, bird rescue is a victim of its own success: Californians now assume when they see a sick bird that someone will care for it, he said.

For now, although pelicans have eaten through much of the bird-rescue group's food budget for the entire year, organizers say that while their finances are spare, they are beginning to develop new sources of support.

Meanwhile, the pelicans are recovering. When released after a week or so of gluttony, they are eager to go, said Diana Pereira, an intern at the center. "Eight or nine will all fly away together," she said. "It's very nice."

Of all New Jersey's invasive species, one of the biggest pests might be the starling — a cheeky little bird once beloved but now largely detested around the globe.

The starling's story in New Jersey starts in 1877, when a group of eccentric birdwatchers calling themselves the American Acclimatization Society got together to discuss the results of their latest project. For the second year in a row, they planned to introduce wild birds from around the globe to their New York and New Jersey neighborhoods.

The New York Times covered the meeting.

The newspaper reported that while the Java sparrows and chaffinches released in Central Park the previous July had disappeared, the European starlings were doing quite well.

"It was expected that they would all prosper," The Times reported.

And how.

Today, starlings number an estimated 200 million across the continental United States and Alaska. Their appetite and disease spread in their droppings cause $800 million in damage to crops and livestock every year, according to a 2007 study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Click here for a story on New Jersey's battle against invasive species

Starling flocks have taken down at least two passenger planes — including one 1960 crash in Boston that killed 62 people — and forced several other commercial planes to abort takeoffs or make precautionary landings, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

In fact, planes departing Atlantic City International Airport hit more starlings than any other birds, according to federal records, but none so far have incurred any problems.

Starlings are successful in America because they are not picky eaters, they bully even bigger birds and they are fearless, said Pete Dunne, spokesman for New Jersey Audubon's Cape May Bird Observatory.

"It's an all-American bird — the quintessential American. It's an immigrant, it moved to the city and it usually gets its way," he quipped.

Starlings also have invaded Australia.

Anyone stopped at a traffic light in southern New Jersey has probably seen the speckled, iridescent birds picking at grassy medians, heedless of nearby cars or pedestrians.

"They are extremely versatile birds. They can figure out how to find food wherever they are. They forage like shorebirds. I've watched them eat fruit or fly-catch or eat a dropped doughnut," Dunne said.

By 1900 the birds had made themselves at home across New York, even building nests in the cornices of the Natural History Museum and prompting curious readers to write The Times to ask about them.

The paper sought the expertise of Staten Island naturalist William T. Davis, who identified the birds as offspring of the starlings introduced in Central Park.

"As the starling has not been found to interfere with other birds, we may be glad that he has come to stay," the naturalist concluded.

One common story, perhaps apocryphal, suggested the leader of the American Acclimatization Society, Eugene Schieffelin, wanted to introduce all the birds found in the plays and poems of William Shakespeare to America. But according to the Times, the club had a broader interest in "birds that were useful to the farmer and contributed to the beauty of the groves and fields."

Similar efforts to introduce skylarks and nightingales were underway in other parts of the country as recent immigrants sought to bring the natural sounds of Germany or England to hedgerows surrounding their new American homes.

But, as the bard said, the worm turned.

By 1912 the Times reported that roosting flocks of starlings were so annoying shoppers in Montclair, N.J., that police set off cannons at night to disperse the massive flocks, aptly enough called murmurations.

Even its Latin name, Sturnus vulgaris, connotes disdain for the sharp-beaked bird.

One reader said the starlings' song in such vast numbers was "about as musical as the hum of a sawmill or the din of a boiler factory." The Times editorialized that Montclair was overreacting or perhaps was suffering for its sins.

"If birds could only talk English or even the patois of New Jersey, we might get new light on this dark subject," the editorial sniped.

By 1914 the birds had spread to Connecticut, where the city of Hartford tied plush stuffed animals to trees and shot off fireworks to flush them away from homes, the Times reported.

That same year, New Jersey's Department of Fish and Game gave towns permission to shoot starlings as a nuisance. New York followed, with one official concluding, "The starlings have no intention of being exterminated. They know they can treat human efforts with contempt."

By 1921 flocks were so huge, they frustrated all efforts at eradication. The Times reported that one animal-control officer in Poughkeepsie shot at the starlings until his arms were tired and he could shoot no more.

Today, the federal government helps farmers poison or trap starlings wherever they present problems. The birds despoil livestock feedlots and can ruin blueberry crops simply by roosting en masse on the bushes.

One farm in Princeton Township, Mercer County, poisoned 5,000 starlings last year, according to published reports.

The USDA has no immediate plans to poison or lethally trap New Jersey starlings this year, perhaps because the bad economy is giving farmers incentive to find cheaper alternatives, wildlife-disease biologist Adam Randall said.

Starlings are one of the only birds in the United States that virtually can be shot on sight.

His agency offers both lethal and non-lethal management methods, the latter of which are geared mostly around keeping food away from the birds.

"They group up in the winter and can eat a ton of grain in a week," Randall said. "Think about a pet bird and how much you have to feed him. Now multiply that by 10,000."

Randall said the agency is not intent on eradicating starlings but simply helping farmers cope.

"Not all 200 million birds are a problem. It's the birds congregating near farms," he said.

[Rut Roh!!]

We had a scope on the "new" Falcon and we're pretty sure there are no bands.  So, it's not Archer.

Rut Roh!!

  This has to be Beauty....she looks big and creamy on chest.

[DRAMA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]

Question:

A little while ago there were picture (which I can't find now) of who we thought was Beauty. But she was looking very light colored (someone made mention of it wondering if it was because she was more mature now).

But these photos show she is not lighter, so I am wondering if those other photos were NOT of Beauty but of some other falcon after all?

So has this guy been here awhile? Was it just not good pictures of Beauty? or is there another female checking out the nest box when Beauty if off somewhere?

DRAMA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   YIKES!!!

Donna needs to change her name to Eagle Eyes!

or nosy! 

No bands on right left leg

If that's his left leg....no band either, hard to tell.

If that is Archer...then he calls Rochester his home! He remembered! But if it's not.....and he does come back. 

[OK, maybe I'm a bit of a Polyanna at times, but I personally think she IS fine...she'll set up a scrape somewhere...find a mate-maybe Kaver, maybe someone new...maybe we'll find it, maybe we won't...but she'll keep being Mariah, the absolutely best peregrine mother ever...]

OK, maybe I'm a bit of a Polyanna at times, but I personally think she IS fine...she'll set up a scrape somewhere...find a mate-maybe Kaver, maybe someone new...maybe we'll find it, maybe we won't...but she'll keep being Mariah, the absolutely best peregrine mother ever...

AGREED!!!!

[Well, what I personally took away from those few sightings of Mariah at Kodak Park & the mall was that she's out there somewhere, safe & healthy...we just don't know where to look. After all, we know PRECISELY where Quest is and has been...and no ones' been able to catch a picture of her...same with Mariah. At least she went out of her way to find some watchers so we at least know as much as we know...]

Well, what I personally took away from those few sightings of Mariah at Kodak Park & the mall was that she's out there somewhere, safe & healthy...we just don't know where to look.  After all, we know PRECISELY where Quest is and has been...and no ones' been able to catch a picture of her...same with Mariah.  At least she went out of her way to find some watchers so we at least know as much as we know...

I understand that Ei....I just feel so bad for her. I mean this is why I was here in the first place...7 yrs ago.

Mariah  Kaver.  I'll watch A & B build a family and do my posting annoying thing...BUT...I also want to see Mariah have that same opportunity to find, (hopefully Kaver), yeah I still hope for his return, and be a mom again. That's all.