Peregrine falcons swap mountains for city life

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (AP) — Once-endangered peregrine falcons, which bred in record numbers this year in Virginia, have shifted their habitat to Hampton Roads.

Most of the 22 known breeding pairs have made their way east from the mountains of western Virginia, said Bryan Watts, director of the College of William & Mary’s Center for Conservation Biology.

And about 100 fledgling falcons have been moved from nests in Tidewater and Richmond to Shenandoah National Park since 2000.

But attempts to re-establish the peregrine falcon in the park and the sheer rock cliffs of Southwest Virginia have largely failed.

“We were flabbergasted, really, to find all these natural cliff sites were empty,” Mr. Watts said. “It was a bit disappointing.”

In Hampton Roads, they nest on bridges, high-rise buildings and ships in the James River Reserve Fleet.

Last year, Mr. Watts and other biologists began trying a more targeted approach to help the falcons thrive in the mountains by placing more birds in smaller, targeted areas. They brought five birds to Shenandoah this year and 15 to cliffs in West Virginia’s New River Gorge.

But fledglings moved to Shenandoah have eventually migrated to Florida, New Jersey, New York and other places, said Rolf Gubler, who oversees the bird’s restoration at the park.

The migratory paths exemplify what’s happened with peregrines in the three-decade effort to restore their population, which was nearly decimated by pesticides, Mr. Gubler said.

“Before DDT hit hard, before restoration efforts in the 1970s and ‘80s, they were really distributed widely,” he said. “With the addition of all this man-made habitat, and the year-round food source, it has really led to this new race of opportunistic peregrines.”

The peregrine, often called the world’s fastest animal for splitting the air at more than 200 mph while diving toward prey, was moved off the federal endangered-species list in 1999 but remains on the state’s list of threatened species.

Shawn Padgett, who has voluntarily led much falcon restoration work at William & Mary since the early 1990s, said it could be decades before falcons soared in the mountains again.

“We’re dedicated to seeing it through,” he said. “We’re talking, unfortunately, 20 years. It’s a long process.”