Hi Tweeters,
I'd like to compliment Kathy Wise on some really beautiful peregrine shots. If you haven't seen them, you might want to check them out. Excellent work and so serendipitous.
This is one of our San Juan Island peregrines. She has a pretty good history and I'd like to share it with everyone.
We started banding peregrine chicks in the San Juans in 1995. We obtained special permission at that time from the USFWS, Bird Banding Lab and the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife.The people there kindly granted us permission and clearly saw the value of this program.
We always put two types of bands on WA nestlings (or eyasses) precisely for the purpose of identifying them in the field. One is a standard USFWS band (aluminum) and the other is a special 2-3 digit/letter black VID band (Visual IDentification). As this example so clearly illustrates, we can get really good information on the future movements of the falcon when someone like Kathy reads or photographs it.
Ed Deal and Mark Prostor banded "upside down 67 over B" at a large cliff nest site in the eastern San Juans on 3 June 2001. She was one of three nestlings.
As a result, this particular falcon was next reported (as an immature) at Clover Point, Victoria, BC, on 23 April, 2002.
She was subsequently viewed by Bob Merrick and Jack Bettesworth in Oak Harbor on 26 May 2002.
And on June 1 2003, we found her breeding at another San Juan nest site, about 15 miles from her natal site. We have seen her there every year since. Believe it or not, she actually knows our boat by now.
She has produced ten eyasses during the last four breeding seasons (2,2,2 and 4).
So far, over the last 12 years, our intrepid and stalwart banding team (Ed Deal, Martin Muller, Wendy Gibble, Mark Prostor and I) have banded a total of 253 eyass peregrines in the San Juans. Because of their VID bands, we have a pretty astonishing 25% rate of return. This includes sightings, re-traps and recoveries (i.e. dead birds). This is a remarkably high rate for raptor banding. At a typical mountain banding station, for example, banders are lucky to get a 1% rate of return.
But I have to say it is because of people like Kathy that we have such exceptional results.
So thank you for sending in these reports. And thanks to Dan and Tweeters too.

Bud Anderson
Falcon Research Group
Box 248
Bow, WA 98232
(360) 757-1911
bud at frg.org