If your office is high in the Cathedral of Learning you may have seen a peregrine outside your window.

Since early autumn the new female peregrine, Morela, has made herself at home at Pitt, choosing her favorite vantage points even if they have windows nearby.

Above, she perches in the wind outside Dr. Alan Juffs’ window on Halloween.

Below, she dines on pigeon in early November on the south face of the building, photo by Anonymous.

Morela’s acceptance of human faces in the windows reminds me of her predecessor, Dorothy, who didn’t mind seeing people indoors. I’m sure that quite a few people became peregrine falcon fans when they saw Dorothy outside the window.

Here’s a montage of Dorothy near the windows from 2009 to 2011.

Like Dorothy, Morela is not afraid to be seen.

(photos by Dr. Alan Juffs and Anonymous)

13 Nov 2019:

Since last August when Sean Brady reported peregrines at the Freeport Bridge, Dave Brooke has spent time at the Treadway Trail parking lot beneath the bridge hoping to take their pictures.

Here are two of Dave’s photos: 9 Nov 2019 (above) and 10 Oct 2019 (below).

As I examined the October photo I noticed that the peregrine’s dotted breast and darkly lined chest look familiar. Few other peregrines look like this, but the female from the Tarentum Bridge does.

For comparison here are two photos of her from last February.

Female at Tarentum Bridge, Feb 2019, two photos by Steve Gosser

Meanwhile Dave’s November 9 photo is not a dotted-breast bird. It is possible though, that it’s the Tarentum male. The female would readily tolerate the presence of her mate but probably not another peregrine.

Compare the top November 9 photo to this one.

Male peregrine at Tarentum Bridge, 25 March 2019

Peregrines expand their hunting territory as soon as their youngsters are able to hunt. They expand even further in winter when their primary prey — birds — have left on migration.

It would not be unusual for the Tarentum peregrines to be five miles from their nest site, only minutes away by air. The area has an additional attraction. Ducks gather at the Allegheny River Lock & Dam #5 just upstream from Freeport.

(photos by Dave Brooke and Steve Gosser)

Interesting eBird note: The Freeport Bridge crosses the line where four PA counties meet: Allegheny, Armstrong, Butler and Westmoreland. The peregrines could be in any one of 4 counties depending on where they perch.

Now that the female peregrine, Morela, visits the Cathedral of Learning nest nearly every day you may be wondering how to identify her.

Here are her unique traits that you’ll see on camera, listed from easiest to hardest.

1. Morela has no bands on her legs. She often stands with her bare ankles showing.

2. All the normally white places on a peregrine — chest, face and cheeks — are peach-apricot on Morela. Even her belly beneath the stripes is peach-apricot, not white. This is noticeable in all photos.

3. Morela’s breast is clear with no spots or flecks of gray except at the edges (tiny flecks highlighted in photo below).

4. Peregrines have a broken necklace of charcoal gray that forms a frame on their cheeks below the malar stripe. Morela’s necklace is very wide when she turns her head, especially the necklace on her left side (necklace highlighted in photo below).

Morela shares some traits with other peregrines:

• Morela is much larger than Terzo. This is a female trait in peregrines.
• Morela’s forehead is pale where it meets her beak. Terzo has this trait, too, but Hope did not.
• Morela’s head and nape are quite dark. So are Terzo’s.
• There is very little color contrast between Morela’s head and back. This is typically a female trait in peregrines. Terzo has much more contrast — dark head, light gray back.

For comparison on camera here are two photos of Terzo in 2016 and 2017. Notice how white he is!

Watch for Morela on the snapshot camera. See if you can identify her.

p.s. Stay tuned on the National Aviary’s snapshot camera at the University of Pittsburgh. Streaming video from the National Aviary will resume in early 2020.

(photos from the National Aviary falconcam at Univ of Pittsburgh)

Yesterday afternoon Morela, the female peregrine at the Cathedral of Learning, spent more than two hours at the nest. Just before she left at 6:30pm the snapshots showed her with her beak open. She must have been saying something so I pulled the archived video to find out.

The video clip below is seven minutes long but is only a fraction of Morela’s time at the nest. It begins when she notices something in the air above her. She turns and ee-chups for several minutes, making the sound a female uses to call to a male.

The male did not come to the nest so Morela leapt to the perch above the nestbox to make her exit.

The male’s coy behavior makes me wonder if Terzo has left the Cathedral of Learning. Terzo is quite familiar with the nest and would have called Morela to come into it. Instead, Morela calls to a reluctant male.

Since the male has not been photographed this fall we haven’t confirmed his identity. He’ll have appear on camera before we know who he is.

Stay tuned at the National Aviary’s snapshot camera at Univ. of Pittsburgh. Streaming video will not be operational until the nesting season begins in 2020.

(photo and video from the National Aviary falconcam at Univ of Pittsburgh)

Now that the new female peregrine at the Cathedral of Learning has been on site for more than six weeks and has actively claimed the nest, it’s clear that she is no longer “new.” Meanwhile, it’s too vague and unwieldy to call her “the female peregrine at the Cathedral of Learning.” So today she gets a name.

In Pittsburgh, the tradition for naming adult peregrines is this:

The primary nest monitor names the bird for his/her own convenience using these two rules. If the peregrine was named at banding that name is preferred. Otherwise the primary monitor names the bird.

— How do peregrines get their names?

As an unbanded peregrine she didn’t come with a name so it was my job to decide what to call her. After many hours of deliberation with my fellow peregrine monitor Karen Lang, the new female peregrine at the Cathedral of Learning has a name: Morela.

It’s a tribute to the pale orange color of her breast, belly and cheeks. Morela means “apricot” in Polish.

p.s. I pronounce it Mor-ELL-ah.

(photos from the National Aviary falconcams at Univ. of Pittsburgh)

Though she isn’t going to lay eggs until next year, the new female peregrine at the Cathedral of Learning spent a long time at the nestbox on Thursday morning, 17 October 2019.

It’s good to see her laying claim the nest. She arrived on campus on (or before) 4 September 2019, but didn’t explore the nestbox until this week — four minutes on Monday evening, 14 minutes on Thursday morning.

This video of Thursday’s activity is long — 8.5 minutes — but it shows the most interesting part of her visit, captured at 10:10am on 17 Oct 2019. The video will seem to run forever. Pretend you’re watching it “live.”

Two more videos round out the 14 minutes, not including the time she sits on the front perch. Click the links for:

• Video#2: Digging in nearby gravel (1:43 minutes)
• Video#3: Jumping up to leave the scene (59 seconds).

Stay tuned for more news tomorrow.

(photos and videos from the National Aviary falconcam at Univ of Pittsburgh)

Morela