When I was growing up, we were taught the world would be out of fossil fuels by the year 2000. But that wouldn’t matter too much because we were all going to be wiped out by the hole in the ozone layer, DDT and PCB poisoning, and starvation from over-population. They sure liked to encourage high school teenagers to be positive about their future. My own children had a different but similar list of causes for despair taught to them in high school: global climate change, micro-plastics pollution, and pandemic plagues. I can only hope these also will be catastrophes the human race can reduce and mitigate. In the meantime, I offer a simple bird as a sign of hope.
What’s that way up there? Notice the glamorous tail-end view that most birds show me.
Peregrine Falcons Pop Up on the Roof Top
I have relatives living at a retirement home in Mississauga. And last year and this year, in the early summer, they had company living on a decorative roof top on the 12th floor: Peregrine Falcons!
It’s a Peregrine!
I first heard the Peregrines in 2020 when two were circling around the building, shrieking in their unmistakeably harsh rapid style. It took until this year for me to have a camera handy when they were visible.
Now it’s more obvious what it is!
A Symbol of Hope
When I was a teenager, Peregrine Falcons were listed as an Endangered species in Ontario. DDT poisoning had caused too many years of egg and nesting failures. Now, however, the population is re-bounding. In Canada, DDT use was phased out starting in the 1970s and theoretically ending in 1990. Nesting Peregrines were re-introduced to Ontario in 1986. In the years that followed, people tried to help the Peregrines, especially city-nesting pairs, often rescuing the fledglings when they crashed on their first flights. In 2006, Peregrines were defined as Threatened, no longer Endangered, in Ontario.
Peregrine Falcon for sure!
I’m pretty sure that the Peregrines seen two summers in a row in mid-Mississauga are either nesting on the retirement home or on a nearby building. Either way, I find them a real symbol of hope as they shriek and circle, then swoop down to panic a nearby flock of pigeons into flight.
Things are not well in the world today…but they could be tomorrow.
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