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[Narrator]: A half century ago, peregrine falcons all but disappeared from the Midwest.
Today, however, they're thriving.
Rosie, UIC's resident falcon, has played a key role in the local population boom, nesting
and laying eggs each spring on the high ledges of University Hall.
Over the past 13 years, 32 eggs have hatched.
The hatchlings' legs are banded to identify and keep track of them as they age.
Rosie's newest chick got her turn June 12.
[Mary Hennen]: It gives us an avenue of looking at things like longevity and dispersal. It's
another way of monitoring the population so we can see how old the breeders are, how far
they are dispersing out of their nests.
The bands are unique to the individual and that's how we are able to get that information.
[Narrator]: Matthew Gies of the Shedd Aquarium is a volunteer for the Chicago Peregrine Project.
[Matthew Gies]: I went out and climbed out over the ledge and collected the bird and
collected a couple of eggs that were left over that didn't hatch, and collected feather
samples – some of the leftover feathers from the prey remains - and brought them in.
And Mary will take those back to the museum and identify them for prey analysis.
[Narrator]: Gies assists Mary Hennen, a Field Museum scientist and director of the peregrine
project, as she bands the chick and takes a blood sample.
[Mary Hennen]: Each bird gets two bands, one on each leg. One is an U.S Fish and Wildlife
Service band that has a long series of numbers. For the last 10 years or so, the Midwest has
been dyeing that purple so even if I can't read the bands, if I get a combination that
has one purple and the other leg has a different kind of band I can say, OK, it's from a Midwest
state.
The second band the bird gets is just considered an ID band. In this case it was a two-colored
band, black over red, but essentially it's just a band that's more easily read through
binoculars or with a camera.
We're guessing the sex of the bird by the size of the leg. In peregrine falcons, girls
are bigger than boys.
Rosie has been here for a number of years, and the male she's been with for the past
- I want to guess five or six years - has been unbanded. Now, you can't a hundred percent
sure say every spring it's the same male if he's not banded, but blood samples we took,
we can look at the genetics of the offspring and say for sure, well, the parental genes
are the same.
[Narrator]: But Rosie's reign atop University Hall may be nearing its end. Her single chick
this year compares with prior years, when two, three or even four young falcons would
learn from her how to spread their wings and fly.
A younger bird may oust her. Or Rosie may return next spring, and become a mother again.
This is Gary Wisby reporting for UIC News