In the Tower

6 March 2009 (Friday, Day 11)

Drove into town and found Dora, the adult female tundra peregrine, sitting on the main cathedral tower consuming a pigeon. This bird is amazing. We have been watching her and it is obvious why she is here. She has complete command of the city area and uses the highest perch in town to dominate the city. She hunts in the morning, kills and eats and then has the rest of the day off, preening and dozing in the shade of the tower or the trunk of a nearby Auracaria tree. As the day wears down and the temperature cools a bit, she becomes active once again and just before dark, she hunts again and feeds near dusk. She is almost crepuscular in her habits. And her hunts seldom appear to last very long. There is such an abundance of birdlife here, primarliy Rock Pigeons and a variety of doves, that she seems to kill almost at will. We did find other prey on a balcony beneath her feeding perches. Among the columbiformes, we also discovered at least two Whimbrel skulls, indicating that she likely goes down to the coast to hunt.

Christian had arranged earlier for us to have access to the church tower and we went up to see if we could somehow capture this bird.

I was eventually able to set up a few possibilities and then wound up spending the entire day behind the clock faces high inside the tower. One of the most important things to keep in mind was to cover one's ears every hour. Although they had ancient bells hanging from huge iron bars, the sounds now come from recordings and enormous speakers. Nevertheless, they are still pretty loud.

Unfortunately, we also discovered that the churchdoors are closed firmly for the night at 8 PM. For a couple of hours, I was planning on an unintentional night inside the cathedral. We were even lifting water and my sleeping bag up the cathedral front via lureline and backpack around 10 PM when one of the churchmen, Horatio, came by to turn off an errant bell. A fortunate circumstance.

The falcon remained untrapped despite a days effort. We did however learn how to strategically attach nooses to heavily eroded cathedral walls.