Since early March, nearly 50,000 new web cam viewers have watched three peregrine falcon chicks hatch and grow from inside a falcon nest box 300 feet above ground at Louisville Gas and Electric Company’s Mill Creek Generating Station.
Now, viewers will experience first-hand what it’s like to tend to a peregrine falcon chick through the view of Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources Avian Biologist Kate Heyden.
Wearing a mobile camera, Heyden will band the chicks before they take their first flight in the next two to three weeks. The banding process involves briefly removing the three chicks from the nest and attaching unique leg bands that will allow biologists across North America to identify the falcons once they leave the nest.
The leg bands have different colors and number codes, which are entered into a database along with the bird’s gender, date of hatching and nesting place. This database is available for all departments of fish and wildlife in North America as a way to track the falcons. Biologists can read the numbers on the bands with high-powered optics.
Heyden also will check the chicks for feather mites, and perform medical tests to check for a treatable avian disease that can affect their ability to swallow.
Once banded, the falcons are placed back in the nest box, which is located in a window of a dormant concrete power plant stack. KDFWR has placed nest boxes at many sites throughout Kentucky, including locations at LG&E and Kentucky Utilities Company’s Trimble County, Cane Run, Ghent and E.W. Brown power plants.
For more than 20 years, LG&E and KU employees have ensured the nest boxes at the company’s power plants provide a safe setting for peregrine falcons to prosper. More than 100 falcons have hatched from these nest boxes. Watch the live webcam feed here.
From LG&E, KU News