Scott Wright, volunteer nest monitor for the Ohio Division of Wildlife, and Macy Hallock, donor and caretaker of the FalconCams, went to the nestsite recently to repair the web cam.  Mr. Wright reports on their close encounters with falcons on the 12th floor of the building:

"I had to arrive before Macy and open the outer windows to get SW and Buckeye used to me at the window. If I waited to open the outer windows until we started working on the web cam, then Buckeye would have been diving at us the entire time of the web cam repair.  This way Buckeye made a few dives at me and settled down, and when Macy arrived and leaned out the window to do the web cam fix, Buckeye never came at us.  We never went out the window, just leaned out.

One of the jobs was to move the cable in front of the eggs in order to improve the FalconCam's view of the nest. 

Mr. Wright continues: "We used the greatest care when me moved the cable.  In order to do so, we had to wait until it was 60 degrees or higher.  Second, we only opened the window enough to use a pole to move the cable.  We first opened the window 2 inches, but it was not high enough to move the pole and be able to move the cable out of the way.  After we opened the window around 4 inches, SW moved off the nest.  I knew I had to distract SW and keep her from jumping up on the pole and risk her landing on her eggs.  So I thought that if I am going to stick my hand out the window to get her attention and keep her attention, I might as well have a camera in it.

I was shooting "blind", just pointing my camera down into the nest and hoping I would get a photo that would be ok.  The entire operation took less than one minute (with the window open) and SW was off the eggs for 5 minutes.  It was 70 degrees and no rain, so there was no possibility of the eggs getting chilled."

Our sincere thanks to Macy Hallock and Scott Wright for their work with the peregrines and the web cams.  Thanks to Scott Wright for his photos which may be used in any non-commercial publication, electronic or print, but please give him photo credit.

To watch the falcons live go to:  http://www.falconcam.apk.net/  Our thanks to EcoCity Cleveland for providing the FalconCams as a public service.