I was transported back to 1977 the other day, when I flipped to the peregrine falcon page in an old field guide. I saw that the bird’s range at that time was funneled down from widespread in northern Canada to just a couple of squiggles in the United States. The range map did not include Vermont or New Hampshire.
With a few clicks of my computer mouse, though, I was back in the present, looking at webcam pictures of five brown eggs laid in a gravel nest earlier this spring by a pair of peregrine falcons on the 13th story of a building in Manchester, New Hampshire. (You can take a peek for yourself at www.nhaudubon.org.) This is one of 15 active nesting sites in New Hampshire. In Vermont, meanwhile, peregrines nested at 27 sites last year and are just a few steps away from being taken off the state endangered species list.
Today, peregrine falcons are not only found, but also nest, in nearly every state in the country. Their population was deemed robust enough in 1999 for the species to be removed from the federal endangered species list.
At that time, however, peregrine populations were still tenuous in the Northeast. The fallback was that the peregrine was still listed as endangered by the northeastern states, and were likely to remain so. Fast-forward to 2005, and the falcons are abundant enough in Vermont that the state is also preparing to delist them.
Starting in 1982, ten years after the pesticide DDT was banned and peregrines had started to rebound elsewhere, teams of volunteers camped out on cliff edges in Vermont, scrambling down the cliffs to feed young peregrine falcons, which had been moved there from captive breeding programs in other states (a process called “hacking”). The Vermont-raised birds, it was hoped, would come to think of Vermont as home and return when it was time to raise their families.
They soon did: a first pair of peregrines staked out a territory on Mount Pisgah in Westmore in 1984. Three years later, three more nesting sites were claimed by peregrine pairs. The number of territories defended by peregrine pairs has increased steadily ever since.
In 2004, peregrines defended 28 territories throughout Vermont, in all but the southern-most two counties. Twenty-seven of those pairs nested, 18 of them successfully. Those nests were home to 40 fledglings, bringing the total to 440 peregrines fledged since that first pair eyed Mount Pisgah as a nursery.
Margaret Fowle, of the National Wildlife Federation, has been part of a team keeping a close eye on peregrine nest sites and potential sites year after year. Since peregrine numbers have been stable and growing, there now seems to be little reason not to take the birds off the state’s endangered species list.
But delisting is relatively new territory, both on the federal and state level. When a species seems to have recovered, what next?
“We’re trying to figure out what this in-between phase is,” Fowle says. “It’s kind of like sending your kid off to college. It’s time, but you don’t want to let go.”
It seems that, like the college student, the peregrines could still use a little parenting. For example, in several places across the region, like Holt’s Ledge in New Hampshire, peregrine nest sites were more successful after hikers were kept away by posting signs and moving trails.
The federal delisting plan calls for monitoring a proportion of known peregrine nesting sites every three years for 13 years. That’s much longer than the five-year monitoring period usually called for under the federal Endangered Species Act, but this extended period will reveal the fate of at least two new generations of peregrines. The final details of the Vermont delisting monitoring and management plan are still being put together.
The situation in New Hampshire is a bit different, explains Chris Martin, a senior biologist with New Hampshire Audubon. Last year, New Hampshire had 15 occupied territories, compared to Vermont’s 28. Those territories were almost entirely in the White Mountains, in the center of the state. (One exception is northern New England’s only urban-nesting peregrines: under the webcam in Manchester.)
But New Hampshire’s numbers are lower, in part, due to a technicality. Among Vermont’s most productive peregrine nests are those along the Connecticut River in Fairlee, Ryegate, and Springfield. Many of the birds nesting at those sites were born and raised in the White Mountains before moving to the riverside cliffs on the Vermont side of the river.
My newer field guide shows the whole continent included in the peregrine’s range. But it can’t show their vulnerability, especially in parts of the Northeast. Yes, the peregrines are back, but they are not entirely home-free yet.