North America’s Peregrine Falcon Gardens for Native Peregrine Falcons

Summary: Raptor gardeners in Canada, Mexico and the United States know that peregrine falcon gardens sustain North America’s peregrine falcons and vice versa.

Peregrine falcons adapt to environments, such as busy city centers, that dramatically contrast with preferred habitats of open landscapes with trees and water sources ~ captive American peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus anatum) during feeding at Shubenacadie Provincial Wildlife Park, Nova Scotia, Canada: Dennis Jarvis from Halifax, Canada, CC BY SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

North America’s raptor gardeners are business, home and industrial landscapers who understand such planned and wild settings for birds of prey as peregrine falcon gardens in Canada, Mexico and the United States.

Raptors, also known as birds of prey, belong in Mother Nature’s feeding chains and food webs as natural enemies and predatory controllers of other animal populations. Peregrine falcons, also known scientifically as Falco peregrinus, consider as priority prey doves, pileated woodpeckers and pigeons and as secondary sources bats and other small mammals. They do not represent daily entries in raptor gardener logs despite household recognition and worldwide reputations as a species whose near extinction is a recent event. They entertain inhabitants of North America’s big cities, inland mountains, open grasslands, salt marshes and sea coasts with the aerial feats that astound generations of falconers.

Two to five brown-blotched, cream-white to white-pink, 52- by 41-millimeter (2.05- by .61-inch), fine-grained or smooth-shelled, oval eggs deposited every other day fill repeat-use, same-site nests.

Mothers-to-be get to choose nesting sites and scratch out 1- to 2-inch- (2.54- to 5.08-centimeter-) deep hollows for incubating the year’s broods 33 to 35 days. Eggs hatch successfully regardless of whether nests are on building ledges or roofs or on cliff ledges now that dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) is banned throughout North America. The interval from the 1930s to the 1950s involves dark days for peregrine falcons, whose breeding DDT jeopardizes by causing eggs to develop shell-less or thin-shelled.

Captive breeding and successful releases into planned and wild peregrine falcon gardens join with pesticide bans to hatch eggs into juveniles that mature into monogamous adults.

North America’s raptor gardeners know of juveniles as brown-bodied, with blue-grey cere (upper jaw base) and eye-ring, blue-grey or yellow feet and toes and brown-and-buff-streaked underparts. Juveniles, like mature peregrine falcons, look darker from coastal Canada through coastal Mexico, intermediate throughout inland North America and paler in the Alaskan and Canadian tundra. Three-year-olds mature to 16- to 21-inch (40.64- to 53.34-centimeter) head-to-tail lengths, 3.25- to 3.5-foot (0.99- to 1.07-meter) wingspans and 22- to 35-ounce (623.69- to 992.23-gram) weights.

Raptor gardeners note the adult’s barred under-tail feathers, blue-grey upper-parts, dark-hooded, dark-moustached head, dark-spotted buff chest, horizontally barred, light-colored underparts and yellow eye-ring, feet and legs.

Ecological awareness and environmental activism and education offer North America’s three peregrine falcon species 15- to 20-year life cycles in Canada, Mexico and the United States.

Alarming situations prompt raucous, rising sequences of hak-hak-hak, hek-hek-hek or rehk-rehk-rehk, and aggressive encounters a mechanical-sounding series of wiSHEP-koCHE-koCHE-koCHEcheche, in planned and wild peregrine falcon gardens.

The flight patterns of peregrine falcons qualify as among the world’s most direct, most graceful, most powerful, with deep, fast wing beats and spectacularly soaring interludes. Adult peregrine falcons realize horizontal, straight-line flights of 70 miles (112.65 kilometers) per hour and straight-down, vertical stoop dives of 245 miles (394.29 kilometers) per hour.

Peregrine falcon life cycles stress monogamous parents solitarily raising eggs, eyasses (babies) and juveniles and united families, thousands-strong, traveling Atlantic, inland, Mississippi and Pacific migration routes.

Atlantic and Pacific coastal routes tend to host the most migrants to northern peregrine falcon gardens in April and to southern peregrine falcon gardens in October.

Peregrine falcons thrive in a range of environments, from canyons and cliffs to countrysides and urban habitats: David Custer @DavidLukeCuster via Twitter April 7, 2016

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

American peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus anatum): Dennis Jarvis from Halifax, Canada, CC BY SA 2.00, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Falco_peregrinus_-Nova_Scotia,_Canada_-eating-8.jpg

Peregrine falcons thrive in a range of environments, from canyons and cliffs to countrysides and urban habitats: David Custer‏ @DavidLukeCuster via Twitter April 7, 2016, @ https://twitter.com/DavidLukeCuster/status/718086007816642560

For further information:

Brave Wilderness. 24 March 2015. "Peregrine Falcon is the Fastest Animal in the World." YouTube.
Available @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mry7evAJHz0

David Custer‏ @DavidLukeCuster. 7 April 2016. "My friend Kristy snapped this picture outside her 15th floor office window in Flint of a Peregrine Falcon." Twitter.
Available @ https://twitter.com/DavidLukeCuster/status/718086007816642560

“Peregrine Falcons.” Peregrine Net.
Available @ http://www.peregrine-net.com/PGS_PGN_GENERAL/Falcon_Info.html