Close to 100 have fledged on former Legg Mason towerThirty-three years after an endangered peregrine falcon named Scarlett was released from her breeding facility and raised foster chicks and later her own hatchlings on a 33rd-floor ledge of a Baltimore skyscraper, the bird's heirs are still bringing more peregrines into the world.
The latest young falcon, or eyas, hatched earlier this spring and is expected to test her wings next month. She is the youngest in a nearly unbroken succession of close to 100 young peregrines to fledge from the same aerie on the former USF&G and later Legg Mason tower, at 100 Light St.
Craig Koppie, a raptor biologist with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, is keeping watch over the family.
"This year and last year, we've had the same pair," he said. Once given names such as Rhett, Tara and Ashley, the shifting cast of avian characters no longer gets names. But their pedigree is usually known.
"The male is from an apartment building in Richmond. I believe he's a 2007 individual, fairly young," Koppie said. "The female is a bird I banded back in 2002 … a local, from the Francis Scott Key Bridge."
