On July 17th it was reported that Ozzie, T2's and Bear's lone chick from this year died after hitting a powerline not far from the nestsite on the Smiley Tower in Grand Forks.
Here's the text of the report in the Grand Forks Herald (I hope to have permission to post the article permanently on the website)
“Ozzie,” the peregrine falcon that hatched earlier this year on top of Grand Forks’ Smiley water tower died Wednesday after flying into an electric wire, a local birder said. Birder Betsy Batstone-Cunningham witnessed the falcon’s fatal flight.
“It’s a sad loss,” she said. “It’s sad that it had to be Ozzie, our first peregrine, our first baby.” She was at the base of the tower Wednesday, hoping to photograph the 40-day-old fledgling as he took brief flights aided by parents Bear and Terminator. Many area birders did the same this past week because Ozzie had reached an age when young peregrine falcons learn to fly.
Ozzie was the sole offspring of Bear, a three-year-old falcon hatched in Fargo who has been hanging out at the Smiley tower for the past two years, and Terminator, a two-year-old falcon hatched in Brandon, Man., that came to the tower this year. The couple had four eggs but only Ozzie hatched.
Locals named him after James W. “Ozzie” Osmundson, who painted the wink on the smiling face tower. Osmundson died in May.
Jackie Fallon, a researcher with the University of Minnesota’s Raptor Center said the mortality rate for birds of prey like Ozzie is about 50 percent to 70 percent in the first year. It’s a very “dangerous time” for the fledglings, she said, because they don’t yet have full control of their flight.
“It’s like giving a 16-year-old kid a driver’s license and a Porsche,” she said. “They have great speed but they don’t know how to control something like that.” High winds, she said, can cause the birds to fly into things. That’s cold comfort to Batstone-Cunningham, who was one of the first people who noticed peregrine falcons were at the Smiley tower.
“I was very upset and emotional,” she said. “(Bear and Terminator) came down and they didn’t swoop at me. They called out for him, one of them, I don’t know which one.”
Fallon said she doesn’t expect Ozzie’s death to affect Bear’s and Terminator’s decision to return to Grand Forks next year. “People like to put human emotions on things,” she said. “But in the bird world, they were successful. They got that chick to fly.”
Peregrine falcon couples, she said, can be more bonded to a good nesting site than to each other.
Ozzie’s body will go to the Raptor Center, where researchers will confirm it’s really him by checking the band that they placed on one of his legs when he was 21 days old on June 27. Fallon said the center might keep the body or donate it to universities or museums, usually for mounting and display.
