Baby peregrine falcon banded under Ambassador Bridge

If you live in Windsor, you know that it seems like there's always construction work happening under the Ambassador Bridge.

A familiar scene of people in hard hats and reflective vests were working under the bridge on University Avenue Wednesday — but it wasn't to make repairs.

It was to retrieve a baby peregrine falcon.

Nearly every year around this time, the Canadian Peregrine Foundation swoops in to conduct a check-up on the newest members of the peregrine falcon family.

A group of birders and interested passersby gathered just to the west of the bridge to watch the affair.

"[Peregrine falcons] are cliff dwellers naturally, and [the bridge] is a wonderful cliff for them," explained Marion Nash from the Canadian Peregrine Foundation. "It has fewer predators being here in the urban setting, and lots of food source, because one of their favourites sources is, of course, pigeon."

Nash explained that it is important to monitor the status of these birds due to the fact that the provincial population was, at one point, completely eliminated.

"We just about wiped them out due to the use of DDT — pesticides. It made it so they couldn't produce a hard enough egg shell to incubate," she said. "It was through captive release and breeding programs, human intervention and rescuing the young that have brought them back to a sustainable level now."

Continued monitoring of the species is important to understand the health of the environment, Nash said.

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