Ringed (banded) racing pigeon in the wild in France (photo from Wikimedia)

15 July 2026

Peregrine falcons eat birds for a living and leave the remains behind, usually just feathers and bones. Every once in a while they eat a banded bird and if we’re lucky the band remains on the gravel at the Pitt peregrine nest. Can we identify who they ate?

Right now there’s a small blue metal band near the green perch that’s been on the gravel for about a year, disappearing and reappearing at random.

Blue band on the gravel, 14 July 2026 (snapshot from the National Aviary Falconcam at Univ of Pittsburgh)

It cannot be read in a closeup but it looks like a homing pigeon band (racing or wedding dove). It’s uncommon for the Pitt peregrines to catch a homing pigeon but I’ve seen it before.

Blue band on the gravel, 14 July 2026 (snapshot from the National Aviary Falconcam at Univ of Pittsburgh)

About 15 years ago during a Pitt peregrine banding, Art McMorris pointed out a homing pigeon band that he’d retrieved from the nest. I volunteered to track down the pigeon’s owner. At the time it was pretty difficult. Each pigeon owner affiliates with a pigeon association and each association has its own band listing. You have to decipher the Association Code before you can begin.

I was having a hard time getting anywhere until it dawned on me that the last 10 digits on the band looked like a phone number. So I called it and immediately reached the pigeon owner in northern Indiana.

He told me that the bird was part of a Young Bird race — hatched 3.5 to 4.5 months earlier — that started in southern Indiana. It should have flown north about 200 miles. Instead it flew northeast about 400 miles — twice as far — before it stopped. It apparently had a compass error so it was totally unsuitable for racing. He did not mind that a peregrine ate it.

At the Center for Conservation Biology they monitor peregrines that nest throughout Virginia including at the James River Bridge at Newport News. Bryan Watts tells the story of prey bands found in peregrine nests. It’s interesting to note that Eastern Shore peregrines eat a lot of shorebirds, some of which have flag bands

Next winter when we clean the falconcams we’ll collect the blue band … if we see it and remember to look.