Peregrine Falcon

The bird

The peregrine is a crow-sized falcon with a black hood that runs down the sides of the head, slate-gray above and pale below with dark bars across the chest and belly. Young birds are brown on the back and heavily streaked beneath, with dull blue feet that turn bright yellow in adults. In North Carolina, by the Wildlife Resources Commission’s account, it nests on tall mountain cliffs with a clear view out, on ledges or in small caves along ridges, bluffs and gorges near water, and sometimes on the ledges of tall city buildings. It builds nothing. The eggs go into a shallow scrape in gravel or soil or leaf litter, three or four of them, once a year, and pairs stay together for life.

Put back

The state’s restoration began in 1984 with the release of captive-raised young into the wild, and ended in 1991 after 80 had been let go. The first territorial pair turned up in 1986 and eight more followed over five years, then the number fell back to four. Twelve more birds were released in 1996 and 1997 to shore up the population and spread it into the Southern Appalachians. The Commission now finds ten to thirteen occupied nest sites in a season and judges occupancy acceptable and nest success poor. In most years about five pairs raise every young bird the state produces. North Carolina lists the species as threatened.

Whiteside

Whiteside Mountain stands 4,930 feet on the Eastern Continental Divide, and the Forest Service puts its south-facing cliff at about 750 feet. Peregrines were first seen nesting there in 1988 and had nested every year since when Smoky Mountain News reported on them in 2006, counting 39 young fledged in eighteen years and calling Whiteside the most productive site in the state. The Highlands Plateau Audubon Society gives the same figures, very possibly from the same count. The Forest Service’s guide to the mountain dates the birds’ reintroduction there to 1985, a year after the state program began, and gives the cliff closure as running from about mid-February to mid-July. The same newspaper account in 2006 called the comeback tenuous.