BirdingGirl

On June 16th, the Boston Peregrine Falcon (the remaining male of the Christian Science falcon pair ) stopped by our office's window ledge. I assume this is the male of the pair because he is so much smaller than the female that we were used to. Another noticeable trait is how big the male falcon's feet are. Just look at the size of those talons! You can see the falcon's nictitating membrane up on its right eye. I'm not sure the reason for this, perhaps his eye suffered an injury or infection and he was keeping it up to protect it. At least twice I saw him lower it to look directly at us but he then he put it immediately back up. Does anyone know a lot about nictitating membranes? They've always fascinated me in birds. Here's one of a red-tailed hawk nictitating membrane that came up when it was preening/scratching. In one of these photos you can see part of the falcon's ID band. It looks like it has the letter I and the number 7 on it.

I hate writing these kinds of posts. First, the Atletico Junior owl mascot was killed, and now this sad update to share. The Boston peregrine falcon that I'm always writing about and posting pictures of is a nesting pair (they're referred to as the Christian Science Administration Building peregrine falcon pair), and I just learned this week that the female peregrine falcon has died. I work in the Christian Science Administration Building where their nest is, and a MassAudubon director was here this week looking for the nest since the female was discovered dead on May 4th. I've offered what information I could to be helpful, since I've kept a pretty regular log of their activity over the past year and a half, but that was the extent of what I could do. I could see the band whenever the bird perched on my window ledge but never close enough to actually read it, so I could never be sure which falcon I was looking at. I know the females are larger than the males, but tha...

Our favorite feather friend, the Boston Peregrine Falcon, dropped by our Back Bay office again to pose for a few photos. The people in our office love when he stops by because he perches right on the ledge outside our windows and doesn't mind the attention. How could we not stare? Photo Credit goes to my boss Larry. He always has his professional camera on hand, which is lucky in moments like this when the peregrine falcon decides to perch on our ledge! It's rare to get to see a peregrine falcon up close and personal. You really get to see the details in the bird's coloring and the scales on its legs/talons. I've been avidly reading my new Hawks at a Distance book. It's a great resource for learning more about raptors. I'm trying to educate myself on the proper way to talk about the different parts of their body, the different classifications, and of course how to identify them at a distance. I'm also learning about the various viewing positions. The pereg...

One of the perks to working in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood is that I get to bird watch. Specifically- I get to study Boston's resident peregrine falcon right from my desk. I wrote a post about our peregrine falcon back in July actually. I took some pictures of it right before it right before it took a poop. That's one of its favorite pass-times while visiting our 16th floor ledge. That and munching on poor helpless birds. There is evidence of the carnage everywhere- just see this carelessly left behind wing for example. Anyone have a guess at what kind of bird it was? Here are some pictures of our friend, the Boston peregrine falcon, from today. He was there in the late afternoon, sitting on the windowsill, looking in curiously: Don't be misled by the white spot on its breast- it's just the flash from my camera making that spot. Looking forward to seeing our little friend again soon! I hope to learn more about our Boston peregrine falcon. If anyone local has any...

Back when I was working in the John Hancock Tower I would see a peregrine falcon fly by, but could never get a picture of it. Now that I'm in a different building (also in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston) I've been able to see better views of the falcon, and I've actually seen it perch on the antenna of a building below us. I attempted to take photos with my new HTC Incredible Android phone (which has a 8 mega pixel camera), but it just couldn't zoom in enough. Then last Friday my boss shouted out "look at that hawk" and sure enough- there was the peregrine falcon perched on the windowsill of our office (several stories up). Though far away, the first picture shows the bird looking directly at us. It was so close! And that last picture was taken right after it took a poop- hence the tail up. hahaha