Dan Brauning and I went on a PennDOT bridge inspection vehicle and banded those young.Īfter a few years we had birds still hanging around Williamsport and we were seeing first year birds early in the summer that had to be coming from a nesting site, but no one knew from where. The following year, a male picked up a wild female and nested on a bridge over the North Branch in Pittston. It proved a little more successful and one of the birds actually took up breeding on top of a bank building in Hamilton, Ontario. The next and subsequent years, we moved the box to the top of the Gennetti and added a live video feed to the lobby. A couple of young birds were brought from Hershey ZooAmerica’s breeding project but that was unsuccessful. The first year, we got permission to place the box was on top of the Commonwealth Bank building. My part was to contact breeders around the country and procure the young for release. Ed Reisch, a local rehabber, built a hack box and was the main contact for the project. I thought, why not hack some birds from top the Gennetti Hotel? I presented this idea to the Lycoming Audubon and a project of hope was formed. Although not nesting in the eastern states, they were still migrating from Canada and some came down through the Susquehanna Valley. In the early 1990s, I was driving through downtown Williamsport and was shocked to see a wild peregrine chasing pigeons. Hacking sites were set up in several locations out west, such as the Snake River Gorge, with nest scraps or manmade hacking boxes and young falcons called eyasses were set free from those sites. Through their efforts, the Peregrine Fund was developed by Dr. They had developed methods to captive-breed these birds for their use and for re-introduction projects. Falconers, though, still had peregrines that they used for falconry. By that time there were no known nesting sites east of the Mississippi in the lower 48 states. In the early 1970s, peregrines were placed on the endangered species list. Thus, the peregrine became a human health barometer, as well as an ecological one. What was worrying was that the peregrine was eating a small bird, that ate an insect, that ate some crop that had DDT on it. Oologists had been collecting eggs for years and the dates of those eggs allowed scientists to determine that DDT was the cause of the thinning. It was a falconer in England who discovered the effects of DDT on the thinning of the peregrine’s eggshell. Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring” brought attention to what we were doing to our natural world. Sadly, all the nests in his book were then empty, as raptors had disappeared due to the use of pesticides such as DDT, habitat loss and human intervention. It was eye-opening to realize that there had been peregrines nesting in Loch Haven the last pair known in the state were actually up the Loyalsock Creek. On one of his trips to Williamsport, he brought along a hand-written journal of all the Peregrine nesting sites in the Eastern United States that he had visited or knew about. One of the founding members of that club was a friend of mine, Jim Rice. The first falconry meet ever held in America was in Media, Pennsylvania in 1936. This was the first time falconry was recorded in the New World. This sparked the interest of a few Pennsylvanians who began the Peregrine Club of Philadelphia. The January 1920 issue of National Geographic had an article describing falconry in the times above. Two white Gyrfalcons and a bejeweled glove were sent, and his son was released. An adviser to the king suggested he send a falcon. His father, the king, sent a chest of gold but it was rejected. You would fill your free time flying a hobby thus the origin of our word.ĭuring the crusades, there was a prince who was captured and held for ransom. There’s a small falcon in Europe called a hobby. In fact, in the Middle Ages, if you were a person of leisure, you were advised to get a small falcon and chase birds. At first it was to supplement the food larder, but by the Middle Ages, it became a form of sport. What’s not to be impressed by the speed, agility, and great looks of the fastest animal on earth?įor close to 4,000 years, humans have had a symbiotic relationship with raptors. The attributes of raptors have found their way to logos, names, and references in many products, placenames and weapons.Īnd rightfully so. Many a country uses an eagle as its symbol of strength and prowess. Throughout history, people have made gods and symbols of raptors. The teardrop represents the mylar stripe under the falcon’s eye. The hieroglyph of an eye with a teardrop is the symbol for Horus. Horus was one of the most revered gods in Egyptian worship. Going back several millennia, we find the Egyptian god Horus, who had the body of a man with the head of a Peregrine falcon.
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