The ducks have stayed north this year, but the falcons are adapting nicely to their urban surroundings, according to a preliminary Washington-area bird count.
Larry Cartwright, compiler for the Audubon Society’s regional Christmas Bird Count, said he hasn’t seen all the data from the more than 120 birders who bushwhacked D.C., Northern Virginia and southern Maryland last month, but he said there was lack of migrating ducks.
Cartwright attributed the low numbers to the warm winter that has kept the waters from freezing. Winter has been coming later year after year, said Cartwright, who has been counting birds in the area for 20 years.
“Migrating is taxing, and the ducks won’t leave unless they have to,” Cartwright said. The ducks will stay north as long as they have a food source and open water, he said.
One highlight is that there appear to be at least three pairs of breeding peregrine falcons living in D.C. Two nest in the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, two live on the 14th Street Bridge and two at Catholic University, Cartwright said.
The male who lives in the Woodrow Wilson Bridge was spotted riding on a moving high-rise crane working at construction site. The large birds favor urban high-rises as nesting sites and dive 200 mph while hunting pigeons.
The numbers of peregrine falcons had dwindled but have been making a comeback since the U.S. ban on DDT as a pesticide.
