Life at the Cathedral

7 March 2009 (Saturday, Day 12)

We decided to see exactly where Dora was roosting (sleeping for the night) on the cathedral, so at 0100, we drove over and looked for her. Unexpectedly, we discovered that she was not on the tower tonight. She was roosting somewhere else in town. We had seen her late the previous evening and assumed she would always use the same location for sleeping. But experience shows that she uses many different perches on the structure during the day as well as at night. This creates a problem when we set our traps for her. She is more unpredictable than we thought.

At 0700, I returned to the church to observe while Kathy went back to try again for the La Serena bird. I immediately found Dora preeening in the early morning light high on the northeast corner, sitting on one of her usual sconces. At 0747, she flew up and finished off her pigeon kill left from the previous night's hunt.

At 0805, having finished her meal, she flew out into the south dead Auracaria tree. At 1041, after preening and dozing, she moved to the west live Auracaria tree.

When the cathedral doors opened at 1000, I ascended to my "cell" once again, climbing the most wonderful ancient stairways circling up inside the bell tower. Using radios, Kathy and I are able to keep in contact so I knew what the bird was doing at all times.

This peregrine is now well known to the local townspeople and Kathy spent alot of time talking to them about Dora and hearing many of their stories regarding her activities. She was even interviewed by a local radio program as she was standing in the street watching the bird. One woman working in a furniture store across the street had first become aware of the peregrine as she was walking along and a pigeon foot fell from the air in front of her.

The local cab drivers, who line up at the corner across from the cathedral, all know her well and have many things to say about her. They were most interested to hear that she nested in the tundra to the north and that she laid 3-4 eggs each year. They only knew that she shows up here in the first week of November each summer.

For the rest of the day, Dora eluded us. Despite my remaining "cloistered" all day, pacing in my cell, she did not fly to any of the perches we had selected. Whether it was random behavior or if she had somehow detected us placing our nooses, she avoided our efforts entirely and we had to eventually give up and move on.

At 8 PM, I just made it out of the cathedral in time to avoid spending the night on a cement floor in the tower. Unfortunately, this is also just about the time (dusk) that Dora returns to the high tower to perch. So the timing is absolutely wrong. If the doors remained open until 11 PM, our chances would have improved markedly. If we ever return here for this bird, we'll bring a pad and sleeping bag along fore th night.

Finally, we would really like to thank all of the people at the cathedral, including the bishop for granting permission to engage in our work and especially to Horatio and Orlando, for allowing us access to their beautiful church. We appreciated both their help and their trust greatly.