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If it is Could, it should be time for the MTA to welcome some child predators! This yr, two peregrine falcon chicks have hatched from the Marine Parkway-Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge.
The company shared images and video of the infants, plus their watchful mama, being banded by Chris Nadareski, a analysis scientist on the New York Metropolis Division of Environmental Safety. Peregrine falcons are on New York state’s endangered species record—they had been practically worn out by pesticides like DDT within the Nineteen Sixties. In 1983, the MTA’s Bridges and Tunnels division began working with the State Division of Environmental Conservation on a nesting program in New York Metropolis to assist carry again these raptors.
Because the MTA notes, “City falcons prefer to nest atop bridges, church steeples and high-rise buildings as a result of they supply a wonderful vantage level for looking prey, together with pigeons and small birds.” Which suggests Nadareski is climbing bridges and buildings to maintain observe of the brand new New Yorkers and band them so he and different scientists can see the place they could reside. As an example, he mentioned that these birds may keep in New York or they may fly all the way down to South or Central America for the winter.
These three week-old chicks reside within the nesting field, 215 toes excessive, on the Rockaway facet of the Marine Parkway-Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge. Nadareski estimated that in one other three weeks, their wingspan might be about three-and-a-half toes and so they’ll begin to take their first flights.
Two different falcon households are being watched as nicely. The MTA provides, “Unhatched eggs stay on the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge Brooklyn tower, in addition to the Throgs Neck Bridge Queens tower. “
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