Memoirs of a Peregrine Hack Site Attendant
When Bob Sallinger first mentioned this project to me last fall, I became quite enthused about it. My duties would be to feed and monitor the young peregrines throughout the six weeks it would take for them to learn to hunt on their own. I envisioned all of this taking place at a beautiful remote site in the mountains. The hack box would be on a ledge of a cliff and I would be camping out in the forest with volunteers bringing me supplies once in a while. Reality turned out to be somewhat different.
Unable to locate a suitable site in the mountains, Bob elected to go with a hacking tower. Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge provided the site, Bachelor Island, a flat island on the Washington side of the Columbia River with few trees, a raised dike around the perimeter and numerous wetland areas in the midst of hay and corn fields. The tower, constructed by Clark Public Utilities, was some 30 feet tall and nine feet square. One of the poles was equipped with climbing spikes for access.
The big day finally came, June 14th, and we banded the peregrines with color-coded bands. Black and Red were males, while White and Orange were females. Blue, a female that fledged prematurely from the Astoria Megler Bridge and could not be reunited with her parents, was added later.
The birds were placed in the hack box during a pouring rain and my six-week vigil began. For the first week the peregrines were fed quail delivered to them through a chute in the roof of the hack box. For an hour each day I observed the falcons through a peephole in the roof to ensure that all were healthy and getting an adequate share of the food.
A week later, we opened the hack box and set the birds free. Once the box was open, Black immediately bolted for the horizon. The others explored the tower platform. Now my work really began. I not only provided food for the birds, but also monitored them from sunrise to sunset. My days started before 5am and ended after 9:30pm. The temperature varied from 50F to 98F, and the wind blew so hard at times I had to tie a 10 pound bag of rocks to my spotting scope.
Two days after the box was opened, Red began making short hop flights from the tower railing to the top of the hack box and finally flew off at high speed and spent the night in a cottonwood tree. Orange and White slept and ate, and ate and ate. Black returned on the fourth day. I watched him stoop on a harrier (he missed) and then make a perfect landing on the tower. He was pretty hungry, but each time he attempted to eat, White, the biggest and a bit of a bully, would attack him until he finally gave up. Eventually, Black grabbed a quail and headed for the trees. As he crossed an open field near the observation site, he was attacked by a mature Bald Eagle that, after a short tussle, stole the quail and headed for the river. Black chased and harassed the eagle, but finally gave up and returned to the tower where he grabbed part of a quail and left for the trees. On June 27th a Red Tailed Hawk tried to steal food from the tower and scared both White and Orange into their first flights.
Five days after that, a pair of immature Bald Eagles attempted to steal food off of the tower but were immediately attacked by Black who chased them both off to the trees! By now the peregrines knew how to handle the local eagles and they quit hanging around. On July 8th, I saw White and Black make kills!
At the time of this writing, July 30th, all five peregrines continue to be sighted hunting and practicing their flying skills in the fields surrounding the tower. They take great delight in harassing Great Blue Herons and egrets. They return to the tower less and less frequently as they roam farther from the hack siteÑa sign that my work here is almost complete! Perhaps next year I will be at a site in the cool forest. If not, I'll probably be out on Bachelor Island with another crop of birds.
By Ken Barron
