Falcon Naming and Banding Ceremony!

Last week, our home school group was invited to be a part of a naming and banding ceremony for some baby falcons who were hatched on top of one of the tallest buildings in our city! I am going to be honest and say that I was dreading this trip. I don't like parking downtown and I don't like birds or heights. This trip seemed like a big disaster for me!

But we decided to suck it up and go. To make it easier, we parked at the downtown library and walked over to the building where the ceremony was held. As it turned out, we got to stay safely inside the building on the second floor and only a couple of the falcon experts headed up to the roof. Whew, what a relief! Also, baby falcons are kind of cute... but they are still birds, so I kept my distance.

 In order to make parking at the library legal, we stopped and had breakfast at the Dunkin Donuts inside the library. No one complained about getting a donut! And it was probably cheaper than paying for a parking garage. It was definitely less stressful. Plus, it was a nice walk downtown.

Our home school group kids had come up with names for the babies and we all voted on them ahead of time. The man from Soarin' Hawks (A hawk rehab group) removed the birds from the nest and banded each one, took a blood sample for the state's records, and then the names were announced. Baby falcons are cute and fluffy but they squawk and make insane amounts of noise. They were not pleased to have bloodwork done. Their mama was not pleased that they were removed from the nest and did swoop at the Soarin' Hawks man a couple times. (Don't worry, once they are banded for identification, they are put back in the nest and everything goes back to normal. This is done to help the birds, not harm them).

 There were three baby hawks and one egg that never hatched. The man in the back on the right was the one who got them from the nest. He also removed some of the gravel so he could identify what their diet had been based on the, um, leftovers found in the nest. Falcons like to nest on gravel so when he returned the birds, he said he was also going to put in fresh gravel for next year.

The falcons return to that nest on top of the power company's building each year and the power company has been really great about making them part of the company! When we left the ceremony, they gave the kids bouncy balls that light up, flash lights, and night lights. Here's Oliver loaded down with goodies!

My three kiddos with our beautiful city behind them. We were only on the second floor of the highest building in our city (from what I was told that day, anyway) but the first floor had really tall ceilings so the second floor was probably more like a 4th floor of a normal building. 

There were several newspapers and news stations at the ceremony. Here are links to the articles I found written on this event.

Journal Gazette Article

News Sentinel Article