Another [relatively] happy ending

A letter received from a regular website correspondent,  Margo Beller

Dear Marie,

Since you are seeking happy endings, here is an odd sort  from here in NJ:

I think I once mentioned the peregrines atop 101 Hudson St. in Jersey City, near my office.
On May 4, on the falconcam web site, the NJ environmental protection people announced that the male had been found on the street a few days before with wing badly clipped. It was rushed to the Raptor Trust, where it is expected to recover but not to return to the nest. So DEP [Department of Environmental Protection] sent someone down with supper for the female since, as with the California kestrels, a lone female can't brood eggs and get food. The prognosis wasn't good.

But on May 5, DEP announced that when the "room service" person arrived, the female and ANOTHER MALE went after her. The question now becomes whether the female will accept this male and how the eggs will fare. But maybe his show of force will "endear" himself to the female who, as I write, is still on the nest.

It amazes me that somehow this female, alone on her nest, managed to broadcast her availability - unless the new male challenged the resident male, who attacked and was injured.

No one knows.

However, I know that on a lunch-time walk last week, after checking the webcam in the building lobby and seeing the agitated female,  I saw the male attack a redtail hawk - rare enough for Jersey City - that came a bit too close to the rooftop nest. The falcon was screaming as it divebombed, trying to force the buteo out of the sky. Finally, the redtail headed northwest with the falcon in hot pursuit.

Amazing what you can see in the heart of the big city.

Take care,
Margo