Falconry Picnic

The Tri-State Falconry picnic was an opportunity for members of the three falconry clubs from Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa to come together and meet and greet, but also was selected in the location that it was held to focus attention on the now successful efforts of many people, though especially the Raptor Resource Project headed by Robert Anderson. Bob has been working for many years to re-establish populations of wild peregrines throughout the Eastern United States. He has worked closely with multiple power companies (see his website) to place nestboxes on many of their power plant smoke stacks. Boxes have also been placed in cities. Now he is happy to report that many falcon pairs are relocating to the natural cliffs to nest, where they belong, and from where they have been absent for so many years. This final step begins to fully restore the wild population.
The location of our picnic placed us in a corridore to see several successful nests. Attention was primarily focused on the powerplant just south of Lansing, Iowa. As we arrived we were able to see two of the young peregrines sitting on the powerpole above. Some of the folks there had much better cameras than mine . . . and they promised to send me some pictures. As soon as I have them I'll post them.

The main purpose of the visit this day, other than seeing wild peregrines, of which we saw several, was to watch and help Bob Anderson as he scaled down the cliff overlooking this powerplant to assess the nesting cliff. It is a perfect cliff and attracts birds, but racoons seem to find it each year, and destroy the eggs. The Raptor Resource Project is trying to figure out what they could do to this ledge to protect it from predation, so that nesting pairs could go on to be successful, and raise their offspring.

Bob geared up, and a couple other people as well. We climbed to the top of the overlooking cliff, and after these three went over the edge, we all just lounged about and watched the sky. We saw the family of peregrines fly by from time to time, and at one point, one of the adult birds soared over the cliff, hovered in the sky looking down at us as we looked up at it. Several pictures were taken. Again, once I get copies I'll post them.

Once the folks on ropes got to the bottom, we pulled the ropes back up, and made our way back the way we came. They drove up from below to meet us.

It was a nice diversion to look at wild peregrines, and enjoy the day. It was a very nice day! Robert says all the successful nestboxes overlook large bodies of water. This one overlooks the Mississippi.