Good neighbors keep your pigeon population down

August 14, 2015 12:43 AM

“It’s almost the norm for locals now,” he says, “just grilling on your balcony barbeque, right there next to one of the fastest animals in the world.”

"Getting an in at a high-rise condo building is never easy—but it’s even harder if you’re a bird. The pair of Peregrine Falcons seen here fought an uphill battle to make their home on this 28th floor Chicago balcony, but they ultimately prevailed (with a little help from a tenant on the inside), and this spring successfully raised four chicks."

The photos are AWESOME.

posted by rtha (31 comments total)

Utterly fantastic. I am very jealous.
posted by biffa at 1:03 AM on August 14, 2015

Such expressive birds, love the little dumpy one sitting on the floor of the balcony!
posted by Iteki at 2:06 AM on August 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

The pictures are amazing.
posted by Dip Flash at 3:38 AM on August 14, 2015

Wow, those pictures are incredible.
posted by teponaztli at 3:59 AM on August 14, 2015

Falcons are striking, but these pictures really downplay the gore and mess that a nesting pair make. A pair of perrys roosted above my former top-floor office on York St, Toronto, and my tedious conference calls would often be interrupted by a pair of bloody pigeon wings being flung from the roost. A blizzard of red feathers would follow, then — if you waited a minute — you could sneak round to the window and see a fed-up bird of prey too full and sleepy to be bothered to fly off. But man! You haven't really been given the stink-eye until a peregrine all red from the kill has stared at you. Those golden eyes!
posted by scruss at 4:29 AM on August 14, 2015 [24 favorites]

scruss, that sounds brilliant! A few years ago in Cornwall, in the middle of a footpath through a field, I came across a buzzard that had obviously stuffed itself with a pigeon - it was sitting flat on the ground with a semi-circle of grey feathers around it. I got to about 4' with its big eye on me before I decided it had better be me that was getting out of the way. Fascinating; seeing that with a peregrine would be fantastic.
posted by biffa at 5:16 AM on August 14, 2015

I woke up yesterday, wandered out into my living room, went over to the glass doors that look onto my balcony and discovered a sparrow hawk devouring a pigeon two feet away from me. Our little balcony was covered in gray pigeon feathers and splatters of blood and the hawk looked at me for a moment with his big yellow eye and I was a little scared for a moment, even though there was a glass door between us, because he looked so fierce and wild. And then he flew off and I had to put on a pair of heavy-duty dish washing gloves and pick up pigeon parts for the better part of an hour in order to make our balcony a bit more useable again. It is a bit startling to come face-to-face with a wild animal like that when you are smack dab in the middle of the city.
posted by colfax at 5:52 AM on August 14, 2015 [5 favorites]

We have both a Cooper's Hawk pair and a Red Tail pair in our neighborhood. I typically see Ms. Cooper sitting on a street light post slowly strangling her dinner at least once a week. Mr. and Ms. Red Tail take turns swooping over the t-ball field where the kids play dangling the newest squirrel or bunny gift for their children pretty frequently too. The kids have gotten to the point where they don't even pause anymore when they hear the screech.

I love city predator birds. They are a beautiful reminder of the world beyond the city.
posted by teleri025 at 6:27 AM on August 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

This is wonderful. Such great photos and kudos to the host for making sure his guests were able to stay.
posted by glaucon at 6:41 AM on August 14, 2015

This is great! I hope that this gains a bit of traction, and building supers and residents stop chasing off these amazing animals.
posted by Elly Vortex at 6:47 AM on August 14, 2015

We have kestrels who nest in a church spire a couple blocks away, I love it when they have a fledgling, they are very clumsy when they're first learning how to catch their own food, it's kind of "nature, red in tooth and awwwwwwww" as they struggle with a chipmunk half their size.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:56 AM on August 14, 2015 [9 favorites]

They are gorgeous. I saw one up close and personal when I lived in Chicago. He was hanging out on the tower of Rockefeller Chapel at the U of C. Thank you, friend, for defending my campus.
posted by capricorn at 7:33 AM on August 14, 2015

Stunning photos!

Once, while I was walking to work early one morning, a pair of pigeon wings dropped on to the pavement in front of me from a height. I decided to not look up to find out who was having an early morning snack, in case anything else fell out the sky to go with the wings.
posted by halcyonday at 7:39 AM on August 14, 2015

These are some great photos.

A pair of perrys roosted above my former top-floor office on York St, Toronto, and my tedious conference calls would often be interrupted by a pair of bloody pigeon wings being flung from the roost. A blizzard of red feathers would follow, then — if you waited a minute — you could sneak round to the window and see a fed-up bird of prey too full and sleepy to be bothered to fly off. But man! You haven't really been given the stink-eye until a peregrine all red from the kill has stared at you. Those golden eyes!

Heh. Had the same experience a few years ago when I worked up near the top of a tower on King St. - the ledges just outside our tinted office windows were perfect for peregrines to watch and wait for something to eat, or disassemble said snack. It was neat to be able to stand a couple of feet from them without them seeing you. There were a lot of bones and feathers on the ledge.

Or once in a while you'd see one zip by the window on its way down to grab some lunch.

The Sheraton has a peregrine cam. No nesting pair at the moment.

As I post this, though, there's a falcon at 18 King St!
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:51 AM on August 14, 2015

This is great! I hope that this gains a bit of traction, and building supers and residents stop chasing off these amazing animals.

It seems like these guys get quite a bit of cooperation from some building management.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:07 AM on August 14, 2015

More, please! It seems like there have been so many headlines lately about people doing really shitty things to animals. I need more stuff like this.
posted by mudpuppie at 8:20 AM on August 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

The Brain Scoop just did two fascinating episodes about the Chicago Peregrine Program (one, two). Apparently it's a pretty successful effort; in the 1950s the species had disappeared from most of the Midwest, but as of last month peregrine falcons were removed from the Illinois endangered and threatened species list! (They remain protected under federal law.)

The Brain Scoop and its wonderful host Emily Graslie previously on Metafilter.
posted by Wretch729 at 8:22 AM on August 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

Aw man, I wish we had some of these guys in my apartment complex. We have a flock of grackles and white-winged doves which nest in the trees and coo/shriek constantly and poop everywhere anyway, it's not like we would have a lot more mess from some hawks or falcons nesting somewhere.

Management has been relegated to studding the common areas with those plastic owl scarecrow things, but last I saw they were all just covered in bird crap. Some actual predatory birds would even things up a lot. And you know, the whole city has something of a grackle-and-white-winged-dove problem... ....hmmmmm.
posted by sciatrix at 8:23 AM on August 14, 2015

Management has been relegated to studding the common areas with those plastic owl scarecrow things, but last I saw they were all just covered in bird crap.

Those do work, but only if you move them from one location to another every now and then. Permanently nailed down, yeah, they mostly just become a fun bird toilet.
posted by Sys Rq at 9:01 AM on August 14, 2015

At Columbia, we had a local hawk that I named Chompy. Every once in a while you'd come out of a class to see a bunch of grad students staring open-mouthed as Chompy devoured a pigeon on the walkway. Hawk-gawking, if you will.

“It’s almost the norm for locals now,” he says, “just grilling on your balcony barbeque, right there next to one of the fastest animals in the world.” I have to admit, from this pullquote I was really hoping the article was going to be about the urban cheetah.
posted by ilana at 9:34 AM on August 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

MURDER BIRDIES HOORAY

there are a bunch of breeding pairs here in nyc and one is close enough to my neighborhood that we have very few pigeons pooping up our windowsills, it's The Best Thing. also i really enjoy hearing their predatory SKREEEEs from above.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:08 AM on August 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

One interesting detail about the return of the peregrine to the east and midwest was that initial attempts to release them in their old, natural haunts weren't going very well, because Great Horned Owls had moved into the empty territories. An experienced peregrine can deal with a GHO, but these young human-raised birds didn't know the tricks and were losing all their nestlings. I believe the move to release in more urban environments was partially motivated by this.
posted by tavella at 10:56 AM on August 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Loved this! Gorgeous photos, especially the one of the bird, at dusk and the city lights.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 11:09 AM on August 14, 2015

For those who love this sort of thing, there are some fantastic prey-transfer photos among a pair and their offspring on this facebook page (should be viewable even if you don't do fb or aren't logged in). If you really, really love this sort of thing, there's an album of a long series documenting one of the peregrines taking and dismantling a redhead duck. It's gory and amazing.
posted by rtha at 11:54 AM on August 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

Oh, to be clear, that fb page is about different PEFAs - in Ohio, not Chicago.
posted by rtha at 11:55 AM on August 14, 2015

For those who love this sort of thing, there are some fantastic prey-transfer photos among a pair and their offspring on this facebook page

''Pigeon? AGAIN?"
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:12 PM on August 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

You know, it really takes me out of a story when the author can't be bothered to look at Google Maps and see that Addison and Belmont are not cross streets.
posted by toddforbid at 1:38 PM on August 14, 2015

My very favorite urban raptor is still Pale Male, though. If birds had monarchs, he'd be one. Reclaiming the ancient lands of his people after hundreds of years! Pioneering new ways of nesting (redtails are normally tree nesters, but he took up the cliff-side habits of the peregrine, and many of his likely descendants in NYC follow this.) A daring hunter who mastered the art of hunting pigeons (redtails normally hunt rats, squirrels, and other ground dwellers), even sometimes killing them in the air. Outlived eight mates, and this year, at the ancient for a redtail age of 25, successfully helped raise yet another set of heathy eyasses.
posted by tavella at 3:28 PM on August 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

toddforbid, from the map on this page, it looks like Belmont/Addison is the name of the pair of birds.

I used to live near the Broadway pair in Edgewater. Every summer there would be one day of teaching the fledglings to glide, from the top of the façade of Senn High School to the trees in front.
posted by conic at 4:09 PM on August 14, 2015

Teenagers of all species have the same awkward and grumpy stage.
posted by marylynn at 5:47 PM on August 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Gorgeous.
posted by turbid dahlia at 4:38 PM on August 16, 2015