Montreal nestbox

[Kris G.]

It would be great to see Falcons in a natural setting.  Neil Grubb has posted beautiful videos on here of them on cliffs in Scotland.  Hope you get a chance to see yours there!

I've gotten to see peregrines three times now in settings where they were nesting on cliffs, and have pictures of two of the scrapes, but in those cases we saw the falcons fly in and out, but the scrape was inset into the cliff so you couldn't really see into it.  The first time was in Yellowstone, the second time was this spring in Sedona (a very excited forest ranger who had been monitoring the nest kept borrowing my binoculars to get a better look), and the third time was just this past Memorial Day weekend.  There is a pair nesting on a cliff in the Smokies, on our favorite trail, but the bluff on which they nest is under a rock overhang...and you can't see the nesting cliff from the trail.  You can get directly under it, but the view is blocked by the overhanging rock...so you can just watch overhead as they fly in and out...or listen for the screeching!  We're 98% sure that they had already fledged juveniles because as we were walking down the trail toward the scrape we saw a light-colored falcon flying in toward the scrape, and another fly out from the direction of the scrape, screaming bloody murder; the second falcon was much darker and looked like it had juvenile coloration, where the first falcon definitely had much lighter coloration on the underside.  The presumed adult flew high above the juvenile.  It reminded me of when Mariah or Kaver would fly in with a food delivery and the juvenile(s) would fly out to greet them.

What wonderful experiences just to see the Falcons, Patti!

[Penelope99]

Thanks Patti, very interesting to know...