Mar 19 2009
Question: Fidelity to Their Mates and Fighting
Question: Do peregrines mate for life? How do they acquire a new mate? Do they fight to the death?
Answer: Peregrine falcons are monogamous, though exceptions do occur. They are even more loyal to their nest sites, especially if they’ve successfully raised young there. Good nest sites are hard to find, so each spring peregrines who want to acquire a site (we call them “intruders”) test the owners of those sites. Intruder males fight resident males; intruder females fight resident females. The losers are often killed. The winners keep the nesting site and become the mate of the remaining peregrine. It is truly survival of the fittest. For more discussion on this see: http://www.wqed.org/birdblog/2008/03/22/peregrine-drama-in-beaver-county/, http://www.chronicle.pitt.edu/?p=79 and http://www.paconserve.org/rc/peregrine-07-images/index.html.
(photo from the falconcam at University of Pittsburgh, 18 March 2007, managed at that time by The Western Pennsylvania Conservancy)
