6 May 2026
Oh, silly me…thank you SK Hideaways. I am so sorry I missed the finer details of your YouTube posting.
SK Hideaways has a post for the banding day of the San Jose chicks. So mark your calendars. One week away.
San Jose City Hall Falcons Banding Day News (4 May 2026) From Zeka Glucs Director of the Predatory Bird Research Group at UC Santa Cruz https://predatorybirdresearch.sites.u… We have scheduled this season’s nest entry for the morning of Wednesday, May 13th! All the chicks will be 22 days old since they hatched within the same 24 hrs of each other. We enter nests for nestling banding and sample collection when the young are all 21-28 days old. During this phase of development they are still shuffling around on their forelegs rather than upright on their feet so they are less mobile and we can safely enter the nest without flushing them off the ledge. At the same time, their legs are fully grown so they can receive the identification bands that will help us follow them throughout their lives. Through body measurements we can determine the sex of each chick. We will also be collecting feather samples for genetics and contaminants. For the first time EVER, we will be placing ultralight radio transmitters on one of each chick’s leg bands that will allow us to remotely track their movements through their first winter and hopefully beyond. I’ll follow-up with more information on this transmitters after they are deployed. All the above research is part of our decades-long peregrine monitoring program in the Greater San Francisco Bay region. On Wednesday, we will assemble our team at City Hall at 8 am and then make our way to the roof and then down to the nest ledge. Many have been asking about how we are preparing for Hartley’s nest defense this year since she was so full-contact last year. I’ll be wearing a new helmet with a face shield and no gopro attachment. Hopefully that along with some different seating arrangements should set us up for a more protected chick banding effort this time around. My sincere thanks for following this peregrine family and our work, Zeka Glucs
Thank you SK Hideaways.