After discovering the mysterious emptiness at the BOIS tower, I ran home to check the memory card from Jo’s prey camera.
I didn’t have to scroll back far to deepen the mystery further. As I looked at the photos from a few weeks back when I had last seen Jo Durt preparing to lay her eggs, I realized quickly that the bird I had seen was not Jo Durt at all. It was an entirely different female. So not only does it seem we’ve lost Jo, but we’ve lost her replacement as well, all before I discovered she’d even been replaced.
In a normal situation, losing Jo to another female would have been devastating. Ever since I discovered that Jo Durt had taken over Billie’s spot under the Causeway bridge, I’d known in the back of my mind that one day Jo would be replaced just like Billie. Though I was sure to dislike this new female for a while, deep down, I knew I would eventually come to love her too, and all would be well.
But now, the revelation of a fifth bird that had gone missing (before I ever had the chance to despise and then forgive her), and a third from BOIS alone adds complexity, intrigue, and improbability to the already perplexing situation. This appears to be some entirely new paradigm, an uncharted territory whose depths have not yet been plumbed.
If we were to lose one person mysteriously on the island during the winter season, it would be a tragic but statistically reasonable occurrence, given the various crime, health, and other related statistics. However, if we were to lose five people, it would be pretty clear that something was seriously wrong, and we would probably start looking for a serial killer. But what if we lost everyone? All at once? How do we even begin to comprehend such a situation? And how do we unravel the mystery behind it?
If the biblical rapture were ever to unfold, chaos would ensue. While a small minority would maintain their faith without wavering, most of us would be overwhelmed by the drastic change to our lives, plans, and dreams. The sheer magnitude of the event would dominate our thoughts, leaving little room to ponder the reasons behind it. Instead, we would be consumed with the task of rebuilding our world, with little time to make sense of what had happened to those who disappeared.
The banded female who briefly replaced Jo Durt on camera was 34/BH. Kathy identified her as being from Virginia and banded by Bryan Watts, who has worked with Peregrine in Virginia for decades. Bryan is also the leader of OspreyWatch, and I’d just spent my whole winter working with him, so I shot off an email letting him know that New Jersey lost one of his birds before we even found her.
He told me that she was born on the Silver Beach Range Tower, which is a 400-foot tall Coast Guard Tower with no other way up except a ridiculous ladder. He banded her alone because no one else would climb up there with him.
He then mentioned that he is currently concentrating on identifying the turnover at his nests due to a similar, mysterious loss of adults. He is seeing the same thing in Virginia. He even shared a disturbing story of two new nesting birds he’d just witnessed stepping over the lifeless body of the previous adult to get to the eggs.
It was their first positive case of avian flu.
It’s everywhere now, and Peregrines are particularly vulnerable.
Identifying adult peregrine falcons at their nesting sites to look for turnover is an extremely time-consuming and challenging task. Fortunately, we have our Little Egg Prey Cams at our study nests, and the unshakeable Kathy Clark in charge of our Peregrines.
After I shared my findings about the BOIS nest with her, she pulled almost all of our camera data to quantify and better understand what was happening with our adults in less than 24 hours.