A pair of peregrine falcons that previously nested at Indiana State University’s Statesman Towers have found true love in a new location — the Vigo County Courthouse.
They’ve been spotted, and photographed, on the southside entrance of the courthouse.
Recently, photographer Brendan Kearns captured the love birds in an act of unbridled love.
He was across Ohio Street photographing the female and didn’t realize the male was nearby. All of a sudden, “He flies about 100 miles per hour and starts doing his thing,” Kearns said. The tryst was over in a matter of seconds.
The photo “is an incredibly rare capture,” Kearns said. “It’s probably in the top five of the most amazing nature moments I’ve photographed.”
A friend of his had spied the falcons a few days before, and they both have been photographing the birds of prey.
Steve Lima, ISU professor of biology, confirmed that the courthouse lovers are indeed the falcons that previously nested high atop one of the ISU towers, slated for demolition in April.
Lima drives by and frequently sees the falcons at the courthouse, although they also have been seen at the Towers almost every day. “We don’t really know what they are doing,” he said. Lima is the unofficial keeper of the falcons and keeps track of them.
To encourage the falcons to find a new location, a nesting box was placed on the southeast corner of the Sycamore Building, located downtown between Ohio Street and Wabash Avenue. “It looked like the best place for them,” Lima said. But the falcons don’t apparently share that enthusiasm. “They’ve shown no interest, if they know it’s there.”
The site has a camera triggered by motion, but there’s no indication the falcons have visited.
Falcons typically have about two months of frisky behavior, leading up to breeding. The female should be laying eggs in a few weeks, he said.
While the courthouse has a lot of nooks and crannies the falcons might find suitable for nesting, “It doesn’t seem high enough,” Lima said. “I assume they will nest in town somewhere. This is their city; they won’t go anywhere. This is their territory.”
They’ve been spotted in other locations, including the WTHI-TV transmission tower and St. Benedict’s Church.
It has been a goal to make life “uncomfortable” for the falcons at the Statesman Towers to encourage them to nest elsewhere, and “that may have been successful,” Lima said.
But they still go back to the towers, where last year they mated and hatched two chicks, which were lost about a month later in a severe spring storm.
This is the couple’s second year together. She hatched in 2013 on a smokestack in St. Charles, Missouri; he hatched at an Indianapolis power plant in 2008. The male previously mated with a different female.
The falcons liked the Statesman Towers because they are like a high cliff “with tons of places to put an egg,” Lima said.