Courthouse falcon chicks to be banded Thursday

PORT CLINTON – The state plans to put tracking bands on three peregrine falcon chicks that nest at the Ottawa County Courthouse at noon Thursday in the first floor of the courthouse.

The trio are the only falcon chicks the state will band in the Northwest Ohio district this year, said Bill Roshak, biologist for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources' Division of Wildlife.

Officials will fit the baby falcons with leg bands that will help the state track their movements and mortality rates. The banding process will be open to the public.

The ODNR is scaling back its falcon banding and falcon monitoring program, Roshak said. The falcons, which were on the federal endangered species list until 1999, have recovered so well that they do not need as much oversight, he said. They are considered threatened in Ohio.

Peregrine falcons tend to choose tall buildings and high cliffs to live and mostly eat other birds, which they catch midflight. A pair have been spotted regularly at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Fremont, and Roshak recently saw one nesting under the Miles Newton Bridge in Fremont.

The state is not monitoring the Fremont birds.

Although the Bowling Green Courthouse and a building at the University of Toledo also have falcon chicks, the ODNR chose Ottawa County's site because this is the second year for the birds, he said. Chicks at the other sites have been banded in the past.

The Bowling Green and University of Toledo sites have monitoring cameras through which wildlife officials and the public can watch the birds.

The Ottawa County Courthouse doesn't have a camera, but it does have a different advantage: protection from the territorial falcon parents who won't like their babies being removed — even temporarily — from the nest.

"You're inside that clock tower," Roshak said, noting that whoever removes the chicks from the nesting box will have to wear a protective helmet. "It's kind of difficult for (the mother) to get to you."

mksmith@gannett.com

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The falcon chicks will be banded at noon Thursday on the first floor of the Ottawa County Courthouse, 315 Madison St., Port Clinton.