Peregrine Falcon's Romance at San Jose City Hall

FALCONS Watchers atwitter
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ta Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group, and 200 to 300 pairs in California, where the birds are on the endangered species list.

The Santa Cruz group last month helped city workers install a gravel-filled tray designed as a nesting box 20 feet below the roof on the tower's south side.

The falcons have been spotted near the box, but so far no one has seen any eggs, City Hall facility manager Matt Morley said.

If they do nest at City Hall, the city hopes to install a Web camera so bird lovers can keep tabs on them, Morley said. That's the case in San Francisco, where peregrines nested on the 33rd floor of the Pacific Gas & Electric headquarters last year and produced four offspring. The Santa Cruz group helped them install the nest and camera.

It's a popular Web site, Stewart said, with as many as 750,000 hits in a week. (Go to www.scpbrg.org and click on peregrine nest cam.) New Yorkers were captivated by a pair of red tail hawks at a penthouse near Central Park.

Nobody has named San Jose's raptors, which observers have spotted soaring near other downtown buildings and at nearby San Jose State University. But the birds seem to prefer world-renowned architect Richard Meier's glass tower at the new City Hall on East Santa Clara Street.

The bris soleil ?- the metal structure that shades the tower in summer but lets it warm in winter ?- provides ideal perching spots and draws a food source ?- pigeons.

?'?'They are attracted to structures that stand out on the landscape,'' Stewart said. ?'?'Ninety-nine percent of the time those are tall cliffs.''

People hoping to catch sight of the birds of prey have to be patient; though the peregrines visit daily, observers never know whether the birds will show up in the morning or midafternoon. Once they arrive, they like to stick around, often lingering for hours near the windows.

The peregrines swoop down from perches on the top eight floors of the tower, catch a pigeon in mid-air and bring it back to City Hall for lunch.

Pigeon parts ?- a wing here, a leg there ?- are left on the metal structure. ?'?'I wish they were better housekeepers,'' Price said. ?'?'But you can't have everything.''





Contact Janice Rombeck at [email protected] or (408) 275-0917.