Baby peregrine falcon dies in fall from Jordan Bridge nest

CHESAPEAKE

A baby peregrine falcon died Sunday after falling from a man-made nest atop the Jordan Bridge and crashing onto concrete decking below, a wildlife expert said Monday.

It was unclear whether the male chick was attempting to fly for the first time - a sink-or-swim experiment called fledging - or if he was blown out of the nest during a storm, said Shawn Padgett, who has tracked falcon trends in Hampton Roads and across Virginia for years.

"It's why bridge nests are dangerous," Padgett said. "A lot of things can go wrong."

The youngster was the offspring of a famous pair of local falcons that often perched on skyscrapers in downtown Norfolk, much to the delight of downtown workers, visitors and bird enthusiasts.

The adults nested for years beneath the Berkley Bridge in Norfolk and had successfully produced two chicks there this spring.

But then in May, the two unexpectedly took off and moved to the Jordan Bridge in Chesapeake, preparing a new nest inside a wooden box set 160 feet above the Elizabeth River.

It was Padgett who placed the box atop the bridge more than a decade ago, and this was the first time any falcons roosted there.

The parents - the father grew up on the James River Bridge, and the mother is a migrant from Vermont - gave birth to a second clutch of eggs earlier this summer in their new home. The male was the only one that hatched.

Scientists visited the nest just last week, measuring the baby and declaring him fit, healthy and about 28 days old.

Then on Sunday afternoon, a Chesapeake resident on his way to photograph the falcons noticed the remains of the male falcon on the decking of the bridge.

"It was sad," said Eddie Martz, a bird enthusiast, who alerted experts to the scene. "I thought it was one of the adults at first, then figured it was probably the baby."

Padgett was not sure whether the young raptor died from the fall or from several vehicles that hit him afterward.

In recent years, state wildlife experts have been moving baby falcons born on local bridges to the rocky cliffs of western Virginia, their natural habitat. It is part of an effort to re-establish wild falcon populations, which were nearly vanquished by chemical contamination in the 1970s.

Known as the fastest flying animals on Earth, reaching speeds of 200 mph in flight, peregrines also were some of the first creatures protected under the federal Endangered Species Act.

They have since been removed from the national list and have slowly mounted a comeback, with about 22 nesting pairs in Virginia. They still are classified as "threatened" under state wildlife regulation.

Scientists had decided to leave the one chick on the Jordan Bridge because he was an only child and since his parents had undergone a traumatic summer already, Padgett said.

Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com