General

Falcon family at North Omaha Station poised to grow with 4 new eggs

Please welcome four new additions to the peregrine falcon nest box at OPPD’s North Omaha Station.

Clark, the box’s resident peregrine falcon, laid a quartet of eggs last week and has started incubating to keep them warm and safe.

If the chicks hatch and survive, they would join a falcon family that has grown monumentally over the last five years. Clark has produced and raised nine surviving chicks since 2020: Storm, Flicker, Flash, Volta, Watt, Ohm, Ampere, Thunder and Lightning.

“She’s been very successful,” said James Thiele, Wildlife and Natural Resources program manager at OPPD.

The new arrivals follow a tragic 2023, when Clark lost all four of her hatchlings. The cause of those deaths remains unknown, though some observers speculate that the chicks ate a bird infected with a parasite or virus.

Clark and her current mate (and brother), Lewis, were born at the Nebraska State Capitol in Lincoln in 2012. Clark was so named because observers believed she was a male, based on her weight when she was banded. She settled into her box on a stack overlooking the Missouri River in 2015, and a few years later began her work as a mother and YouTube sensation via the pair’s webcam.

A good spot for falcons

If the new chicks hatch, their parents will take turns sitting on them as protection during their first week, Thiele said. Clark will do most of that work while Lewis hunts for food.

Thiele said the falcons have chosen a good spot at North Omaha Station, an area rich with songbirds and waterfowl. Across the Missouri River, a large feedlot draws plenty of pigeons ripe for the taking.

“They’re in a target-rich environment,” Thiele said. “There are a lot of good food sources around the plant.”

Thiele, who has tracked other falcons in downtown Omaha, said peregrines will pursue just about any bird species.

Challenges ahead

Of course, nature can be brutal. If the chicks hatch – a big if – they’ll have to eat enough to survive, avoid life-threatening diseases, and stay warm as they learn to fend for themselves. Red-tailed hawks and other large predator birds are a distinct threat, as are other peregrine falcons who might want to take their nest.

“It’s a wait and see game,” said Jerry Toll, a licensed master raptor bander who has banded previous falcon chicks at North Omaha Station. “It can go either way.”

The eggs should start to hatch 34-36 days after the final egg is laid, which would fall sometime in early May. Once they start hatching, the chicks might take a full day to escape their shell. Chicks typically take 12-18 hours to hatch, or up to 72 hours in extreme cases.

“We all have our fingers crossed for the newly laid eggs, but the first year is the toughest for the chicks,” Thiele said. “If they can make it to their first birthday, their chance of survival increases tremendously.”

If the chicks survive to 20 days, Toll will attach tracking bands to their legs for future observation.

Learning to fly

Through the summer and into the fall, the chicks will have a lot to learn: How to fly, navigate and catch food. Their mother will nudge them toward more independence until sometime around late summer, when they’ll stop returning to their nest.

“If they make it through that first year, there’s a very good chance they could live 10-12 years,” Toll said. “They will have jumped through the hoops and come across most of the problems they’ll encounter in their lives.”

Peregrine falcons have the potential to live almost 20 years in the wild, although most at that point would be well past their breeding age.

During their first year, Thiele said the young falcons will explore the world and likely disperse in greater distances than they will as adults. Females tend to move farther than males. Falcons can easily travel several hundred miles without much effort.

“They really could scatter quite far, so it’s hard to say where they might end up,” Thiele said.

Similar settings

However, Thiele said falcons tend to settle in the types of areas where they were raised. A city falcon is likely to find home in a city, just as a falcon accustomed to remote cliff faces is more prone to nest on a cliff. The North Omaha Station perch is particularly good because it’s high in the air and somewhat shielded from the elements.

“They know it’s a great place to raise their young,” Toll said.

No one knows where Lewis and Clark go for the winter, and learning their whereabouts is difficult unless an observer spots them and reports their band information to the Midwest Peregrine Society, a coalition that works to promote the survival of peregrine falcons. The group tracks falcons via the Midwest Peregrine Falcon Restoration Project.

Peregrines in the United States generally fly south for the winter. Many peregrines are spotted in warmer locations, such as the Mexican Gulf Coast.

Another pair of peregrine falcons

OPPD’s Nebraska City Station recently established its own peregrine falcon box, and two eggs have already appeared. Steamfitters installed the box last fall to attract peregrine falcons. Kyle Schroeder, a maintenance specialist at Nebraska City Station, said the falcons will help control the local pigeon population. The pigeons leave large amounts of feces in areas where workers routinely perform maintenance, raising safety concerns.

Toll said peregrines eventually reach a point when they can no longer produce viable eggs and will stop laying them. But at age 12, Clark is still going. To keep the peregrine falcon population stable, parents just need to have two chicks survive in their lifetime.

“It helps keep the population stable,” Toll said.