I saw the parents feeding swallows to their young several times in the months I watched them, though they more often brought pigeons to the nest ledge. It was fascinating, more than a century later, to see numerous Northern Rough-winged Swallows in the gorge and witness the same kind of pursuits they described. (Peregrine Falcons were called “Duck Hawks” in North America at that time.) Allen and Knight provided detailed descriptions of the falcons hunting Northern Rough-winged Swallows. Knight- appeared in 1913, in the National Audubon Society’s Bird-Lore, precursor of Audubon magazine. The first in-depth article about this nest-“The Duck Hawks of Taughannock Gorge” by Allen and H. Fuertes was a remarkable artist-regarded by many as the successor to John James Audubon. It now hangs in the Fuertes Room at the Cornell Lab. The year after finding the falcon eyrie, Fuertes made an oil painting of an adult Peregrine perched on a cliff at Taughannock with a fresh-caught Bufflehead. from Cornell in 1911 and go on to become a professor of ornithology there, the first in the United States, and teach many of the greatest ornithologists of the 20th century. But Allen was still a grad student in 1909. A frequent birding spot for them, they dubbed it “Sapsucker Woods.” Decades later, the area would become the home of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which Allen founded. One of my favorite old Ithaca birding photographs is of Fuertes and Eaton standing together as Allen climbs to a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker nest-the first one found in central New York State. They no doubt told Arthur Allen about their discovery the same day. S far as anyone knows, the first birders to see the Taughannock Peregrines were famed bird-artist Louis Agassiz Fuertes and ornithologist Elon Howard Eaton, who heard the loud calls of the birds echoing up the gorge and tracked down their eyrie in 1909. It was an exhilarating experience-sweetened only by me later finding out that I got the job. Scott Sutcliffe, then executive director of the Lab, happily obliged, and I spent a wonderful afternoon there, imagining what it must have been like to see Peregrines nesting in the gorge. When I came to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in 1990 to be interviewed for the position of editor-in-chief of Living Bird magazine, I asked if someone could take me to Taughannock Gorge, about 14 miles away. And they always ask about Taughannock Gorge: Do you ever see Peregrines there? Will they ever nest there again? Can I visit Taughannock with you? Countless people I’ve met over the years have told me they feel the same about Allen’s image. Bent’s Life Histories of North American Birds of Prey when I was 12 years old, and I’ve loved it ever since. I first saw the picture in a battered old copy of A. What a colossal image what a perfect depiction of the world of the Peregrine Falcon. Allen in the 1930s.Īrtistically, the composition of the image could not be more perfect: Three young Peregrines rest on their nest ledge in the lower-left corner as their mother perches on a branch diagonally from them in the upper-right corner, standing guard as the gorge's mighty Taughannock Falls-one of America’s most picturesque waterfalls, plunging 215 feet-thunders down in the background. For almost 80 years, the gorge has been a beloved destination for generations of Peregrine Falcon aficionados-almost like a religious pilgrimage site-all thanks to a single black-and-white photograph taken by ornithologist Arthur A. But they somehow still hadn’t returned to Taughannock (pronounced tuh-GAN-uck). They now once again nest throughout the lower U.S., Canada, and Alaska. Since their near brush with extinction in the late 1960s, Peregrine Falcons have bounced back strongly across their range-largely due to the banning of DDT and a massive recovery effort. Why, you ask? Because Peregrines haven’t nested in Taughannock Gorge since 1946, and this place is important. Such an experience is extraordinary by any measure, but having it happen here was what made it so special. Throughout the summer they would progress from dorky adolescents into sleek juveniles, rivaling their parents in beauty and aerial abilities. Then, in June, I observed the young falcons make their first clumsy attempts at flight. From across the gorge, peering through my scope, I saw them incubating their eggs in April and feeding their three downy chicks in May. I live near the gorge and spent countless hours watching these graceful flyers as they hunted, making spectacular stoops at pigeons, swallows, and other prey, or sometimes just relaxed, preening while perched on ledges or fallen trees hanging over the cliff side. Early this spring and through most of the summer, I had one of the most remarkable wildlife experiences of my life: I watched a pair of Peregrine Falcons successfully rear a brood of young at Taughannock Gorge, outside Ithaca, New York.
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