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Courtesy of AllisonL over at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s Falconcam forum and our own Falconcam member Donna comes some welcome news regarding Millie, daughter of Freedom and Purity from 2005. Allison writes:

Millie, a daughter of Freedom and his first mate Purity, [hatched] in 2005, is now at the Monroe Power Plant in Michigan. Freedom, of course, is a son of Mariah and Kaver from their first year together, 2002.

Millie’s new mate is Leopold, who is now 14 years old and has been at this nest since 1997. It was reported last year that he had flown into a wire and had been euthanized, but this turned out not to be the case. I believe that the falcon involved was Leopold’s long-time mate, Raynie.

Millie’s former mate is/was Swifty, a son of Freedom and Roosevelt at the Fort Wayne nest. Leopold is a brother of Erie, the former mate of Dorothy at the Pittsburgh Cathedral of Learning nest.

Leopold and Millie had two [eyases] this year; Heidi and Tyson. One of them appears to be missing. From an update:

We had 20 chicks born this year in SE Michigan (that we are aware of anyway), 17 of which lived long enough to attempt first flight and were successful (we lost all three chicks at 12 days of age from our Whittier Apartments site in Detroit – cause unknown), as of today (7-19-2009) we can account for 12 of these young Peregrines still alive (no carcasses have been found, however we are not able to find 2 at Blue Water Bridge, 1 at UofD Mercy, 1 at Monroe Powerplant, and our only Flint produced falcon ‘Maize’).

Allison received her information from a post on the Macomb County Peregrine Falcon Page. Unfortunately there doesn’t appear to be any further word about Ihteram, who had nested at St. Joseph’s Cathederal near Detroit in 2008, but was unable to nest there again this year due to changes at the site that closed off access to the bell tower where she and her mate had nested.

You may recall our previous news about Millie’s appearance in Ohio, but this past year we learned that Millie had left the Ohio site and her whereabouts were unknown. It’s wonderful to know that she’s found a new home and is carrying forward the rich heritage of the Rochester falcons. Millie is the older sister of Archer, and it appears that her new mate Leopold is the brother of Beauty’s father, Erie. So that makes Leopold Beauty’s uncle!

Wow, the family tree is getting really complicated!