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The Peregrine Chick:
Olympic sailing team recruit a peregrine falcon
The British Olympic sailing team have recruited a new teammate who they believe will help them secure gold… a peregrine falcon called Felix. Team bosses decided to bring in the bird in a bid to keep away noisy seagulls which disrupt the athlete's sleep and training. Seagulls squawking is said to have become a huge problem at the 2012 Olympic Games sailing venue in Dorset where the team train. Squad members are constantly having their routines disturbed by the squawking waking them up at 5am. Enter Felix, who now patrols the sky a couple of mornings per week… and had unsurprisingly put the the seagulls off the area.
Link to story (with photos): NewsLite - Olympic Sailing Team Recruit a Peregrine
The Peregrine Chick:
Moscow, Russia
Woman detained after falcons found in luggage
Customs officials seized eight rare falcons at the Moscow airport after a woman tried to smuggle the wrapped, boxed birds out of the country, the International Fund for Animal Welfare reported.
The gyrfalcons were found in two cartons being loaded into the hold of a plane bound for Damascus, Syria, on Sunday, the group said. The woman who checked the cartons as her luggage was detained and released pending a court appearance.
“At least 100 wild gyrfalcons are smuggled out of Russia each year, primarily driven by demand from the growing popularity of falconry in the Middle East,” said IFAW’s Russia director, Masha Vorontsova, in a statement.
The fast and powerful predator is the world's largest falcon. It breeds in arctic and subarctic regions and preys primarily on large birds, according to the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology.
They can command as much as $50,000 on the black market. Officials believe the birds seized at Sheremetyevo International Airport were captured in Russia’s Far East and transported through two security checkpoints and a customs inspection before being detected.
The birds are expected to survive and will reside at IFAW’s raptor rehabilitation center until they are ready to be released into the wild, likely sometime next month.
The gyrfalcon is listed in the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red Book of endangered species and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species’ Appendix I. The latter designation, says IFAW, makes any commercial trade involving the birds illegal.
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/11/22/report-woman-detained-after-falcons-found-in-luggage/?hpt=Sbin
The eight gyrfalcons were swaddled in pillow cases and other cloth when customs officials discovered them at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport.
carly:
A Fishy Peregrine
WQED / 27 Sept 2010
As we all know, peregrine falcons eat only birds and they catch them in the air. Or do they?
Last Wednesday I received an email from Dan Yagusic, an excellent birder who watches the peregrines on the Allegheny River bridges. (He’s the one who first found Mary Cleo (Dori) at the 62nd Street Bridge. She now lives at Gulf Tower.)
Here’s what Dan saw at dusk on Tuesday, September 21:
Last evening at dusk I was passing Washington Landing’s Marina (Allegheny River) at a no wake speed in our boat. In the near darkness I spotted a large bird flying fast downriver. All of a sudden, directly across from me about five Mallards took flight squawking very loudly as they went. This bird (unidentified as of yet) started making repeated swooping turns down to the water, but appeared to be chasing nothing at all! I grabbed my binoculars at this point and lo and behold to my utter amazement it was a Peregrine Falcon!! I continued watching as this Peregrine made at least 20 passes over the water, each time rising 30 feet or so in the air before dropping down and dipping it’s talons into the water as if to make a splash. Running through my mind were the likes of “What the heck is this bird doing?” and “Just what is making him/her do this?” After who knows how many trips down to the water the Peregrine came up with a FISH in it’s talons. It proceeded to fly directly to the nearest tower where it immediately started eating its catch. Perhaps you or others know of this behavior in Peregrines, but in my limited experience I have never seen a Peregrine even attempt a shot at fishing. That sure did make my evening, let me tell you! Variety can be the spice of life, even for Peregrines??? — Dan Yagusic
Amazing!
I did some research and found two (only two!) references that said peregrines occasionally eat fish though one said they took them from ospreys. So what was going on here? Dr. Tony Bledsoe of the University of Pittsburgh’s Biological Sciences Department explained that our mid-latitude peregrines focus on birds but that peregrines occur nearly worldwide and are quite cosmopolitan. Right now peregrines from Canada and the Arctic are migrating south through Pittsburgh. Those birds travel to South America and have skills and tastes that our local birds never had to cultivate. If they know how to fish and the ducks aren’t cooperating, why not? Even so, it’s very unusual!
source: http://www.wqed.org/birdblog/2010/09/27/a-fishy-peregrine/
The Peregrine Chick:
Peregrine falcons return to a greener London
by Yuki Takayama, The Asahi Shimbun
A peregrine falcon with a wingspan of almost a meter wheels above the Houses of Parliament and alights on the Victoria Tower, gripping a pigeon in its talons. It is 5 a.m. in early July, and high above Westminster, the falcon begins tearing into its freshly killed breakfast. White feathers ripped from its prey flutter and dance in the breeze around the tower.
This magnificent bird was once endangered in Britain. Peregrine falcons used to inhabit cliffs and rocky outcrops around the southeast of England, but they were targeted for extermination during World War II in an effort to prevent attacks on carrier pigeons used by the military. After the war, the use of the agricultural chemical DDT and other factors caused a collapse of the population of these birds of prey.
About 10 years ago, however, peregrine falcons began to appear in the center of London. The city's high buildings offer them prime vantage points from which to look for prey. At the Houses of Parliament, to which the birds returned in March 2009, a square plywood tray measuring 50 by 50 centimeters was affixed about halfway up the 100-meter-tall Victoria Tower to help the birds nest. David Morrison, 50, who has been involved in falcon conservation efforts in London for nearly 10 years, says 18 falcon chicks were born this year and that numbers are increasing annually. Currently, 24 peregrine falcon pairs have been identified in the central part of London.
This is just the beginning of a neat story about "greening" cities - well worth the read: The Asahi Shimbun - Peregrine falcons return to a greener London
Eye-spy:
Former special forces soldier jailed in UK for stealing rare falcon eggs for rich Arab buyer
A former special forces soldier was jailed Thursday for attempting to sneak out of Britain with a stash of 14 rare peregrine falcon eggs hidden in socks strapped to his body. Jeffrey Lendrum, 48, was trying to get to Dubai, where falconry is a national sport and such eggs can fetch 5,000 pounds ($11,000) each on the black market. He was caught when a cleaner spotted him behaving suspiciously in a business class lounge at Birmingham International Airport on May 3. Lendrum originally told police he was carrying store-bought chicken eggs, which he said he used to treat a bad back, but he pleaded guilty Thursday at Warwick Crown Court in western England, standing with his arms crossed and his head bowed for nearly the entire hearing.
Prized in falconry for their phenomenal speed — they are thought to reach up to 200 miles (320 kilometres) per hour when they dive — the birds are a protected species under British law, which bars their export.
Judge Christopher Hodson said Lendrum's crime hurt not only the local area "but in some measure to the planet and its future" and sentenced him to 30 months in jail. Lendrum, an Irish citizen, has previous convictions for stealing rare eggs in Canada and Zimbabwe. A former member of the special forces of Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was known before its independence, he has apparently put his military training to use — at various points either rappelling down a cliff or lowering himself from a helicopter to reach particularly remote nests.
Guy Shorrock, with The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said he believed Lendrum had been stealing eggs for years. "It's clearly very lucrative," he said. "He has a very good buyer in the Middle East for these birds and he probably receives tens of thousands of pounds (dollars) for his trouble." Retired police officer Andy McWilliam, who worked on the case for the National Wildlife Crime Unit, said he was hoping to meet Lendrum behind bars to learn more about his tactics.
As for the eggs themselves, quick-thinking police made sure they were kept warm. Eleven out of the 14 have hatched, and most of the falcon chicks have since been returned to wild.
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