Gulf Tower Highlights, 2010

At long last I’ve created a slideshow of the best peregrine photos from the Gulf Tower’s 2010 nesting season.

It was an amazing year.  On March 20 the long-standing female at Gulf Tower, Tasha, lost her nest to Dori even though she’d already laid two eggs in it.  On April 2 Dori began laying her own eggs next to Tasha’s and by April 7 the nest held five eggs from two mothers.  All five nestlings fledged and only one, Blue Girl, is known to have died.  Quite a successful year for all that drama!

The photo below shows Dori and Louie courting in the early days of their relationship.  It was March 26 and Louie had just brought Dori a huge, tasty meal which is bulging in her crop (she’s on the left).  Now that she’s been fed they’re bowing to cement their pair bond.  Behind Louie you can almost see Tasha’s two eggs waiting to be joined by Dori’s three.

Special thanks to everyone who sent me images from the webcam last spring and to Jim Altier and Sharon Leadbitter for contributing their photos.

(photos in the slideshow are from the National Aviary Gulf Tower webcam, Jim Altier and Sharon Leadbitter)

5 thoughts on “Gulf Tower Highlights, 2010

  1. Kate — these are great photos! and I don’t remember most of them, so what a wonderful treat this morning.
    Who cares if there is going to be 6 inches of snow today… it won’t be long now until we can start watching the peregrines again. yay!

  2. Thank you all for the great slide show! It brings back many memories, some bittersweet.

    The live cameras are so cool to enable us to watch the lives of breeding Peregrines. Amazing!

    I am so looking forward to the 2011 nesting season. 🙂

  3. Thank you for the slide show, like Marianne said..some bittersweet memories. From watching and listening to Tasha’s cries that night to seeing Louie’s insistence and persistance in preserving his eggs with her despite a new female taking over to seeing all 5 eggs miraculously hatch and knowing that Tasha had given us one last gift..well two really 🙂

    I still hope that the female that was reported at Dori’s old location turns out to be Tasha and that she is living and flying free, she sure deserves it for all the years she’s given her fans!

  4. I want to link your blog to our facebook page, the Friends of Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh – Downtown and Business. We are going to run a “Interest Page’ on the Birds Downtown with some reading suggestions. I know this has been done before with other groups, but we’ve not done it.

    We never tire of bird watching downtown, even if its the pigeons.

    Sam Webb

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