Falcons Return to Mohonk — The Mohonk Trust Newsletter No. 27
The following article comes from a historic newsletter from The Mohonk Trust — № 27, Winter 1975–1976.
This summer, for the first time in almost twenty years, a rare and beautiful
bird once again made its home in our Shawangunk Mountains. The peregrine falcon returned to Mohonk in a major field experiment supported by Cornell University, Mohonk Mountain House, The Mohonk Trust, and several dedicated volunteers.
The peregrine falcon is perhaps nature’s finest acrobat of the air. In its headlong dives after prey, it reaches speeds well in excess of 150 miles per hour. Its maneuverability through the forest treetops and past the jutting cliffs is simply breathtaking. Along with this athletic ability come handsome plumage and dark, unblinking regal eyes. The peregrine is a magnificent animal.
The last peregrines nested at Mohonk in 1957, but it was not until the 1960s that scientists discovered the reason for their mysterious disappearance throughout the East. Like the bald eagle and the osprey, the peregrine was the victim of man’s indiscriminate use of chemicals such as DDT. As a predator at the top of a long and complex food chain, the peregrine was ingesting poisons that had been gathered and concentrated at each lower link of the food chain. The result was egg shells so thin that they broke during incubation under the weight of the parent birds. The peregrine is now extinct east of the Mississippi River. In more distant parts of the world, such as the Arctic, other races of the peregrine have survived in the relative absence of poisonous chemicals, and it is from these birds that this summer’s Mohonk peregrines were obtained.
In 1971 Dr. Heinz Meng of the State University at New Paltz learned how to breed peregrines in captivity. His methods were adopted by Cornell University’s Laboratory of Ornithology, which built a large “Peregrine Palace” and began to produce enough young birds for a serious effort at restoring the peregrine in the East. On July 30 of this past summer Dr. Stan Temple of Cornell arrived at Mohonk with a cardboard box containing three young peregrines, still covered by their fluffy white baby down. They were installed in a nest box at a cliff-side site which we believed would be free from disturbance — accidental or intentional — by people or animals. Our volunteers kept a 24-hour guard beside the nest box, right through the torrid heat of early August and rainy nights that followed. We were mindful that each bird represented Cornell’s investment of about $5,000, although that figure was at best a symbol of the real importance of the experiment.
In August the three birds had lost their down feathers and were old enough to leave their box, learn to fly, and eventually begin to hunt their own food. A
tiny radio transmitter was strapped to their legs, so that we could track them down in event of a mishap. (In 1974 during another peregrine release a bird fell down a tall chimney and was rescued because of the transmitter.) August 11th was the start of a month which anyone who loves birds would have found singularly rewarding. Each morning, as the sun poked up above the Hudson River mists, Heinz Meng would appear at the cliff for the first of two daily feedings. Our birds soon understood this routine and came swooping down, shattering the morning stillness with their distinctive cries. Then, as the sun warmed the land and thermal air currents developed, came peregrine play time — hour after hour of flying practice, complete with barrel rolls and figure eights, all against a backdrop of blue sky, dark green trees, and brilliant white rock. As the days passed the birds began to make odd lunging motions in flight. We soon realized that they were catching dragonflies — their first step on the road to full independence. Late in the month they were away from home most of the day, out on long exploratory flights over the Wallkill Valley and up and down the length of the Shawangunks. But each evening they returned to Mohonk to roost.
On August 28th our three peregrines were captured for the final time. Their transmitters were removed, and the baby-blue leg band of the North American peregrine release program was put on. The time was rapidly approaching when they would migrate south for the winter. The last bird was seen here in mid-September.
This year Cornell was able to raise and release sixteen birds at five sites in the Eastern U.S. Our Mohonk cliff-side eyrie was selected with a fine sense of biological and historical continuity. In 1929, on that very same ledge, Dan Smiley had banded and Keith Smiley had taken motion pictures of young peregrine falcons. For old-time peregrine lovers, such as Dr. Tom Cade, the director of Cornell’s peregrine project, the Mohonk site was emotionally very satisfying, for here one could watch the birds living in their natural habitat, just as they did before the shadow of DDT passed across their race.
Was the experiment a success? The immediate answer is yes, for three young birds learned to fly and feed themselves. The complete answer is still unknown, for those who love the peregrine will not be satisfied until they return to our mountains to nest and raise their young. Several years will pass before our three birds are old enough even to start nesting. Given all the hazards of life in the wild, the odds against the survival of any one bird are substantial. But the people at Cornell knew this before they began, and they are determined to continue breeding and releasing birds.
Does the experiment matter? It would be easy to say that it does not, for there were never many peregrines to begin with, and most of us have lived now for twenty years without missing them. The modern scientist, taking a broader view, would tell of the interconnectedness of living creatures, of man’s ignorance about the fine tuning of this system, and of the importance of every species to the pool of genetic material that makes up the “life-bank” of this planet. Of course, in saying that the scientist would merely be restating what wise — and reverent — men have known for centuries.
