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May 9, 2008

Photos: Chicks banding together

Journal photo/ Bill Murphy
As a peregrine falcon swoops in, Mike Amaral from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, left, ducks while lifting a falcon chick from its nesting box on the roof of the Bank of America building in downtown Providence. The chick was one of three being banded for identification purposes this morning. Helping to keep the parents away was volunteer Joe Zbyrowski, who built the nesting box in 1996.

Journal photo/ Bill Murphy
Amaral places a band on one of the chicks. Once the birds become full-fledged hunters, Zbyrowski told a Journal reporter last month, they will leave their parents' hunting territory, never to return.

Journal photo/ Bill Murphy
The three chicks -- bands now on -- sit together.

Zybrowski said last month: "They’re like babies," he said. "They eat, and they poop and they grow.

"And they become aware of their environment. They become attuned to the voice of the parents. Then they’ll begin to visually look for the parents to bring food. Then they’ll start to notice each other and things in and around the nest box. They’ll start looking at insects in the box, and then they’ll start looking out of the box, taking in their environment.

"Eventually, they get closer and closer to the edge of the nest box. Then they’ll perch on the edge of the box. It’s situated so they can go out to a platform or a ledge where they’ll exercise: It’s jump and flap the wings, jump and flap the wings."

Read more of Journal staff writer Tom Meade's earlier report on the falcons, and come back to projo.com for his story of today's banding and more photos.

Posted by Andrea Panciera  at 3:50 PM | Permalink

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Ugly chicks | May 9, 2008 9:01 PM link

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