Three falcons tagged on Farley Cliffs
Mass. Wildlife bands peregrine falcon chicks at Farley Ledges in Erving
ERVING — With the risk of getting attacked by a peregrine falcon mother, or worse, falling — Shayne Burke and Jesse Caney ascended the side of the Farley Ledges to be able to get three chicks from their nest and banded by Dr. Tom French.
French and Caney work for the Massachusetts Division of Fishery and Wildlife, which tracks the threatened species throughout the state. French said this was the first time in 15 years that he has been back to the ledges to band falcons.
The task, which took a few hours, required the crew to hike up the “plateau” — a flat area of dirt below the rock face. Then Burke and Caney climbed up to a nest on the ledge while the parent peregrines, the fastest birds on earth, screeched and soared — sometimes swooping towards them.
The mother bird would land on a tree near the nest and loudly squawk at the climbers.
However, French said the rural falcons such as the ones at the ledges are not aggressive, unlike the urban ones.
“We’ve been at urban sites where the mother falcon was so aggressive, we had to keep her contained,” French said. “These falcons aren’t around people as often. It’s a novelty to have them as close as they are here.”
On the plateau below the nest, French and a volunteer, David Gates of Athol, collected feathers and bones.
“There are a lot of blue jays, a woodpecker, morning dove and a red-wing blackbird,” French said. “They pluck everything they catch, so that’s why we collect the feathers. This is what they’ve been eating.”
Once the climbers came down to the plateau, they detached the fabric bags from their carabiners and handed them over to Gates.
Together, Gates and French tagged the birds. Gates held the chick in his hands, carefully holding out its foot to French, who attached two bands.
“We band them so we can follow them for the rest of their lives,” French said. “It’s important to correctly sex them because if we accidentally sex a smaller female as a male, she could outgrow the bracelet. We put on two bands — one silver, one green. One is like the VIN number on a car and another is like a license plate.”
The chicks — one female and two males — were about 3 weeks old, which is the perfect age for banding.
“They’re mellow at this age,” French said. “If we came here three weeks later, they would be nippier.”
That isn’t to say the chicks weren’t nippy — Caney sustained some scratches on his arm while getting them from the nest.
French said most commonly there are three birds in a nest, but he saw his first five-chick nest in Brockton this year.
Two towns in Franklin County are home to peregrine falcons — Erving and Deerfield.
Currently, there are 46 pairs of peregrine falcons in the state, which French said is considerable because in 1966 there wasn’t a single pair in the eastern United States.
Due to the use of DDT, peregrine falcons, as well as other species of birds, were laying thin-shelled eggs that broke beneath the weight of incubation, according to Mass. Wildlife.
Before 2017, peregrine falcons were listed as endangered in Massachusetts, and they are currently listed as threatened.
The first nest was tagged in 1987 and Mass. Wildlife has been working to track the falcons since. “This type of information helps staff understand the species’ natural history and aids in conservation work,” according to a press release from Mass. Wildlife.
However, French said while the population is increasing, there is still concern about pesticides.
“Part of the issue is relying on science — we use evidence to put together this data we gathered,” French said. “But it’s just as important to have science-based policies. We have better pesticides than we used to — we just banned neonicotinoids — but we need pesticides that are effective and then become harmless. They need to do their job, then disappear.”
