![]() “Hunting and providing for a mate starts in January, and all the pressure of providing for his mate and future chicks will be starting, so it’s good he has had time to heal.” ![]() “It was helpful that his injury and recovery happened outside of breeding season, so he had time to recover,” she said. Malec said Cal Falcons is grateful for the care that Grinnell received from Grinnell’s been seen hunting successfully and has displayed “a bulge on his throat, indicative of a crop full of food,” Schofield added. “You can still see that some of his flight feathers are broken, but for falcons, feathers are only replaced once a year, usually in the early fall, after breeding has been completed.” The broken tip of his bill is growing back, and observers on the ground on campus “have not been noticing any stiffness in his wings, like they were seeing immediately after his release,” she said. 17 after being treated for injuries at Lindsay Wildlife Rehabilitation Hospital, Grinnell flew back to his home on the Campanile. Within hours of being released outside the Lawrence Hall of Science on Nov. Schofield said that Grinnell “appears to have healed wonderfully” after suffering a damaged upper beak, a wound near his chin and throat and an injured left wing. But the male rival, who initially showed interest in Annie, “hasn’t been seen in a couple of weeks,” said Peterson. In October, Grinnell was injured by a male and a female floater who chased him from his territory. Since Annie and Grinnell’s arrival on campus in late 2016, “floaters” - non-breeding adult birds of prey attracted to occupied territories - have frequently circled the Campanile looking for the opportunity to take the couple’s home away from them. They don’t use the nest box except if there are eggs or chicks there, during the nesting period, she said, but they stay close to the nest to defend their territory. Recently, Annie and Grinnell have been seen on the Campanile at dark, indicating that one or both of them sleeps on the tower’s outer ledges, said Malec. With the days getting longer, this is the time that courtship behavior starts to increase.” “They have been talking to each other and flying together, but this is the first time anyone has seen courtship behavior between them. “They know each other is around,” she said. (Cal Falcons image)Ĭal Falcons’ Mary Malec, who monitors local raptor nests for the East Bay Regional Park District and leads crews of volunteers who keep an eye on the Berkeley campus’s falcons, said Annie and Grinnell have been seen on the tower regularly, and on other structures west of campus, since ![]() 2, 2022, on the nest where she’s laid eggs since 2017, indicating her interest in breeding this winter. Annie was “scraping” the nest, getting it ready by laying flat on her stomach and kicking the gravel to create a small depression.Īnnie was seen on Sunday, Jan. 2, Annie was seen mid-afternoon on the webcam at the nest site, indicating that “she’s in the breeding mindset right now,” said Schofield. They begin to mate “in earnest right around Valentine’s Day, and egg-laying has been pretty consistently around March 10 to 15,” said ornithologist Sean Peterson, also on the Cal Falcons team.īut already yesterday, Jan. Generally, Annie and Grinnell’s annual bonding behavior begins in mid-January, with head bow displays and the preparation of their nest box on the tower. “The new male had begun to display similar courtship behaviors with Annie, … and they were actually courting pretty intensely for a little bit,” said Lynn Schofield, an ornithologist who is a member of While he was healing there, Annie began soliciting pairing behavior with the male falcon involved in Grinnell’s attack, and the two were seen flying and landing together on campus. 29, when Grinnell was found injured on a trash can in Berkeley and taken to The raptors’ future as mates has been in doubt ever since Oct. , where the raptors have produced 13 chicks since 2017, picked up the hopeful activity - head bowing on a ledge of the 307-foot-tall bell tower at about 7:30 a.m. 17 after being attacked by rival falcons in October. ![]() On New Year’s Day, UC Berkeley’s longtime peregrine falcon pair, Annie and Grinnell, bid goodbye to 2021, but apparently not to each other, with courtship behavior observed for the first time since Grinnell returned to campus on Nov. ![]()
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