by Lauren Hubbard, Associate Editor, Digital Content
Falcon season has certainly been a roller caw-ster this year!
The 2025 falcon season kicked off on February 24, when both adults, Merriam (F) and Webster (M) were spotted on the Du Bois Library roof. At the time, the avian flu epidemic was in full swing; although peregrines had relatively low case numbers, it was still a relief to see the returning adults healthy and ready for nesting.
After a few weeks of pair bonding, Merriam laid a full clutch of four eggs on March 20, 22, 24, and 26. We usually don’t see eggs until the beginning of April, when the weather starts to shift towards spring; despite the early laying, Merriam and Webster were able to maintain constant incubation, toughing out the worst of the late winter cold and snow, thanks to a more enclosed nestbox design.
In a dramatic change from last year, where we had one surviving chick, three of the four 2025 eggs hatched successfully on April 28, 29, and 30. This is probably due in part to Merriam no longer being the novice mother she was last year; she really stepped up this time in tag-teaming chick care with Webster, even after sustaining a leg injury of unknown origin in mid-May. Once we discovered that, we were in constant contact with our MassWildlife partners about her health. As she showed no signs of broken bones, infection, or other serious conditions and was in the midst of caring for the chicks, we recognized that any disruption would cause undue stress on her and the family, so the decision was made to allow her to heal naturally, which she slowly began to do.
The three chicks were banded on May 23 by MassWildlife, who confirmed that we had three large, healthy females. With the gender reveal came the annual public naming contest, and falcon fans voted overwhelmingly in favor of The Powerpuff Girls: Blossom (94/CA), Bubbles (95/CA), and Buttercup (96/CA).
Two weeks later, over the weekend of June 7, the “Powergrine Girls” successfully fledged. However, that achievement didn’t come without at least one bump in the road…er, air. On June 9, Buttercup was hanging out with one of her sisters on the parapet when she helicoptered down into the walled area of the Du Bois Library roof. We found her the next afternoon hiding underneath the cooling tower, none the worse for wear, and gave her a helping hand back up to the nest box.
Towards the end of June, drama began in the nest box: Merriam disappeared, and a new, unbanded female was spotted in the nest box, performing pair-bonding head-bows with Webster and chasing away the juveniles from the rooftop. After searching for Merriam to no avail, we concluded that she, slowly healing from her leg injury, had been either killed or driven off by this interloping female. Although we mourned her loss alongside the falcon fan community, we know that territorial disputes mean that the falcon population, once completely extirpated from the northeast, has made a successful comeback.
Speaking of comebacks…you can imagine our surprise when we saw a familiar face in the nest box on July 17. Merriam returned! She had apparently reclaimed the territory and her mate, and there were no further sightings of the interloping female. Once again, we contacted our partners at MassWildlife. Despite the fact that she was still sporting a limp, since Merriam was clearly strong enough to fly, hunt, and retake her territory, she was left unbothered to continue to heal naturally.
Sadly, Merriam’s homecoming was short-lived; she disappeared again in late summer. The interloping female from early summer also made a brief reentry and exit, although we do know what happened to her: she was discovered by the Lederle Graduate Research Center Lowrise, unfortunately killed by a window strike while pursuing a pigeon. We initially thought that the female that began to frequent the nest box after the interloper’s demise was Merriam, but once we were able to get decent close-ups from the cam, we questioned the falcon’s coloring, beak shape, and lack of pronounced limp. The general consensus among the fan community is that this was yet another interloper.
As of this publication, while Webster remains the unchallenged male, there has been a string of new females battling it out for dominance of the nest box. We have yet to see which female will end up taking the territory, and we may not know for certain until next nesting season.
Outside of the nest box, we have a few other egg-citing updates regarding our falcons. We were thrilled to be featured on “The Fabulous 413” radio show with hosts Monte Belmonte and Kaliis Smith, and special guest Emily Brewster ’99, Merriam-Webster senior editor and UMass Amherst alumna, representing our falcons’ literary namesakes. Additionally, we brought the falcons (virtually) into several classrooms this year, Zooming with more than one hundred local elementary- and middle-schoolers to chat about all things peregrine using our award-winning open educational resource (OER) peregrine falcon curriculum. One class even made a bulletin board of falcon facts and poetry as the culmination of their studies. We hope to connect with even more students and educators in the future; if you are interested in bringing the falcons into your class or school, please contact Lauren Hubbard at: lauren.hubbard@umass.edu.
Click for more info on the falcon cam
