Monday, June 16, 2008

Living the Wild Life In Evanston

Last year, when my friends Lulu and Ten-S discovered that I needed a waitering job so that I could continue my plan to leave teaching and go back to school, they really came through for me, directing to a friend of theirs who was a co-owner of a great restaurant in Evanston, a suburb north of Chicago.

They also told me to look out for the family of Peregrine Falcons that had taken up residence on the roof of Evanston's main library, across the street from the restaurant. I finally saw one of them a couple of weeks ago. I was able to get one grainy shot of one of them.

Today, however, I got a much closer camera shot of one of them. One of the offspring had flown out of the nest, but panicked and settled on a ledge on the building the restaurant is housed in.

Unfortunately, the bird's sibling had failed to fly and had fallen fatally earlier in the day.

It was fascinating to watch the mother falcon try to coax it's child to fly. It was perched on a column of the library, across the street, flapping its wings, perhaps demonstrating to her offspring what to do. People gathered to watch it told me that she had flown down earlier with food in her mouth to try to get it to fly back up to the nest. When I left work at about 9:30 tonight, the baby falcon was still on the ledge. I'm hoping it works up the courage to fly back up to the nest.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Peregrine Falcons are awesome!

Evanston strikes me as a great place for a variety of good eateries, as well as for a culture in general. That was my impression when interviewing in the area. Liked it a lot, and always love Chicago :->

-- Erik France

Anonymous said...

Thanks to the blog owner. What a blog! nice idea.

Anonymous said...

Probably I can say with this blog make, more some interesting topics.

Anonymous said...

This blog could be more exciting if you can create another topic that everyone can relate on.

Anonymous said...

that doesn't happen everyday. wish you all the best.

lulu said...

Wow. The whole Lotto family was here.

vikkitikkitavi said...

Ignore those damn Lottos. Bunch of Philistines is what they are. WE love your blog, Johnny.

GETkristiLOVE said...

I once saw the same sort of thing with a baby owl that was born in a tree just outside my 2nd floor window at my old computer company. I named him Oliver and watched him grow from when he was tine. They one day, the mom was trying to get him to fly and kicked him out of the nest onto the ground. Oliver sat there for the longest time, until I left work, but then I noticed he was gone the next day. I hope he made out okay.

Fran said...

The falcons - SO cool!

Tenacious S said...

Did the little guy make it? Hope so. There's a nest of some kind of hawk or falcon near the school where I work. I saw one soaring through the cloudless blue sky yesterday and it was beautiful.