A female peregrine falcon who helped raise 24 chicks over the past seven years out of a nest atop the Statler Towers in downtown Buffalo has died, state officials report.


An unidentified individual found the dead falcon on the street and brought it to Spot Coffee on Delaware Avenue Oct. 10, according to Meaghan Boice-Green of the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
The bird was banded in Hillsborough, New Brunswick, in June 1998 and showed up in Buffalo when it was eight to 10 months old.

Dubbed the Hillsborough falcon, it took up residence in the Statler perch with a male, whose band was not clearly identifiable, and the pair took over the nest from another pair that had left the box for the season.
When the female that had been in the perch returned in the spring of 1999, bird watchers and biologists believe the Hillsborough female killed the older one. Peregrines are known to be aggressively territorial.

The new breeding pair produced four offspring that first spring, and 20 more over the years. Many area residents watched the birds online via a small camera near the nest.

Boice-Green said she was unable to confirm a rumor the bird flew into the coffee shop window and died from a broken neck, but the shop's assistant manager, Ted Getman, said that was not true.

Getman said he was outside the store when a man approached with the bird in his hand, and told him he had found it dead on the street.

The man stayed outside the store for about a half hour with the dead bird before a truck from the city's Animal Control division took the bird away.
Boice-Green said the bird was subsequently frozen and probably will be sent to the state laboratory in Albany for further examination.

The male was believed to have been seen on Oct. 12 with a new female, Boice-Green said, although it is unclear whether the new female had taken up residence.

Bill Burch of the Buffalo Ornithological Society said he too heard from someone who said she saw two peregrines flying above downtown Buffalo recently.

Burch said it was possible that a new female may have killed the old one, but that "if another female came in and took over, the previous male would leave town. The new female would doubtless have a mate of her own."
Peregrines are nature's fastest flyers, having been clocked up to 200 miles per hour when they dive, or stoop, in pursuit of food, usually other birds. Their average life span is eight to 10 years, although there are some instances where they have reached 20.

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