The trio of peregrine falcon chicks nesting in downtown Hamilton are all female, and as of Wednesday, they have names: Blakeley, Westdale and Stinson.
Normally lounging about 18 storeys up on a ledge of the Sheraton Hotel, the sisters got to go inside to be weighed, named and banded on Wednesday.
Peregrines have nested at the hotel since at least 1995, and throughout that time, Falconwatch, formally called the Hamilton Community Peregrine Project, has kept a close eye on the ledge using webcams and volunteers who track the birds as they learn to fly, ready to rescue them if anything goes wrong.
Mark Nash from the Canadian Peregrine Foundation describes the process of weighing falcon chicks to determine their sex, and banding them for conservation.
Part of that work involves attaching lightweight aluminum bands to each chick for conservation purposes. Because of monitoring efforts, researchers know urban peregrines are out-producing their rural counterparts, head of the Canadian Peregrine Foundation Mark Nash told those assembled for the annual event.
“[Cities] can be and have been a very hospitable place for your peregrines … with a lot of support in-between,” he said.
The banding process starts when a climber scales down to the nest from the roof. They put the chicks in a carrier and raise them up, then wait on the ledge so the mother doesn’t notice her chicks are gone and abandon her nest.
Some years — this one included — that means fending off aerial attacks from an angry mother falcon. The trio’s mom, named McKeever, dove at the climber multiple times on Wednesday.
Inside, representatives from the Canadian Peregrine Foundation and environmental consultancy group 8 Trees Inc., worked to weigh each chick, determining their sex. Females are bigger than males.
Then, each sister got two lightweight identifiers around their ankles: One for Canada and one for the United States.
Blakeley weighs 739 grams and will have red tape over her silver band. Westdale weighs 755 grams and will have white tape. Stinson, who weighs 775 grams, has blue tape.
All were born around April 26. A fourth egg did not hatch.
Anne Yagi, a biologist who runs 8 Trees, led the banding, occasionally spraying water into the chicks’ open beaks.
Each chick squirmed and screeched. Nash said that’s normal — just them being “pissed off” and joking they’d just been exposed to the ugliest creatures they’d ever seen: humans.
If all goes well, the sisters will join a growing list of chicks McKeever and their dad, Judson, fledged together: Auchmar, Balfour, Dundurn, Wynnstay, Delta, Gibson, Kirkendall and Stipley.
Lately, chicks have been named after Hamilton neighbourhoods.
“They were well behaved,” Yagi said after sending off the last chick. Yagi has been banding birds for 28 years, she said, noting she banded the sisters’ parents too.
While Yagi is a banding veteran, at least one person in attendance was brand new to the experience.
Shaun Ahad has been working as a sous chef at the Sheraton for about 15 years but this was his first time at a banding. “I’ve always been fascinated with falcons and birds of prey,” he told CBC Hamilton, “so, it was quite an experience to be able to be part of something like this.”
He also got to hold one of the chicks before they returned to the nest. “Holding something that’s just so beautiful is just on a different level.”
After the banding, the climber returned the chicks to the ledge and returned to the roof, with McKeever diving at him the entire time, her screeches audible from the street.
By early afternoon, she and the chicks were reunited in their nest.