Bob Freeman works as an instrumentation and control technician at Muscatine Power and Water — but his lifelong passion is birds.
As a child, Freeman studied and watched all he could find about birds. When his family moved from California to an Iowa farm in the 1970s, he was thrilled to be surrounded by chickens and ducks. But one specific bird captured his attention more than the others.
“The raptors stuck out in my mind, and the raptor I liked the most was the peregrine falcon, because they're the fastest creature on Earth and they're beautiful. I was very interested in them,” Freeman said he even befriended other children with his fowl obsession. “When I was in art class in school, we were always drawing birds, and then the teacher complained, ‘You got to draw something else.’ So yeah, it’s been a lifelong passion.”
Years later, Freeman married his day job with his hobby. He convinced his plant manager to let him install a nest box for peregrine falcons next to the power plant in 2015.
“I knew falcons were in the area because they liked the Mississippi River — a lot of high bluffs. And we did have some nesting activity here on top of the roofs,” he said. “They had pebbles for the roof on top of the tar, but they didn't have any protection from the sun or the wind.”
It took a little convincing, but eventually the plant manager agreed that Freeman could install the box over the weekend when no one would know about it, and they would make an announcement to staff the following Monday.
It didn’t take long for the birds to notice the nest box.
“Me and my supervisor put the box up on a Friday afternoon, and by Wednesday the next week they moved in,” Freeman said. “We had a couple there within five days.”
While some of the staff initially protested, the nest box has now been embraced and they even name the new babies after Muscatine Power & Water staff.
Over the last 10 years, Freeman has observed almost 25 babies reared in the nest.
This year’s newest falcons are a brother and sister, Denise and Richie, named after Freeman’s coworkers. The parent falcons are teaching the young how to hunt and kill.
The Muscatine nest box is part of a larger effort to support these birds in Iowa.
From 1959-1989 there were no peregrine falcons found in the wild in Iowa, but thanks to conservation work done by organizations like the Raptor Resource Project and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, these raptors are seeing success in their natural habitat and urban environments. Last year, the 17 nests monitored in the state produced 36 young falcons.
Amy Ries, a naturalist at the Raptor Resource Project, said that in the 1970s researchers and falconers found that the peregrine species of falcon were in decline and in danger of going extinct. This was partly because it used to be legal and, in some cases, encouraged, to shoot peregrine falcons. It was also because of the chemical DDT, an insecticide used in agriculture applications. The DDT caused falcon eggs to be thin, so that when the parent sat on the eggs, the weight of the bird would crush them. The EPA banned DDT in 1972.
To combat the decline, the Iowa DNR started raising falcons in captivity and releasing them in key locations in the state beginning in the late ’80s.
“The basic technique is you take young birds who are ready to fledge, so maybe 35, 38 days [old] and you have a large box called a hack box that they can overnight in, because even in a city, there could be predators,” she said. “They don't have parents, they don't have anybody to help them out. You let them out during the day. You put food out on a board called a hack board. Flying is instinctive, but being good at it and hunting is learned, so [the provided food ensures] they don't starve.”
As time passed and the assisted reintroduction of falcons continued, nesting pairs began to emerge again in Iowa.
While the hack boxes were popular with peregrine falcons, they were slow to return to the cliffs. So, the Raptor Resource Project, founded in 1989, started building and maintaining natural nest sites along the cliffs of the Mississippi River, the peregrine falcons’ historic home.
“I love to watch them,” Ries said. “They're just so amazing in flight, and they're also wonderful parents. We have several nest cams, and we can see how parents interact with their young and how young interact with each other, and the sibling squadron after they fledge — a ton of fun.”
The pivotal moment of a young falcon’s life is fledging, when the birds first take flight. About a week before they attempt to leave the nest the birds will get restless and start testing their muscles, but the first jump is a major test of their skills.
The Muscatine Power and Water nest box is 225 feet in the air on a concrete smokestack.
“They're not real coordinated at first, and so I'm always afraid they're not going to make their first flight,” Freeman said. “.... They don't just fall to the ground, they'll kind of crash land like an old airplane and tumble in the weeds, and I've seen that.”
Freeman said most of the birds are successful on the first try, but if he sees a baby crash and not get up after giving it some time, he will cover the bird in a blanket and bring it back up to try again.
“I'll just set the baby on the roof, and the mother will see it, and she'll come over and chat with it,” he said.
Of course, the conservationists have observed plenty of hardship too. A few years ago, infestation of black flies tormented the babies and led to some peregrine falcon deaths. This year the Muscatine falcons laid five eggs, but only two hatched.
“I think it's because we had a very, very cold and windy April. Maybe that has something to do with the egg mortality, but that's nature,” Freeman said. “I think our average is good at our site. In the last 10 years, we've hatched 23 babies now just from Muscatine Power and Water.”
Ries says the success of these nest sites wouldn’t be possible without people like Freeman.
“Having a volunteer on the ground who really knows what's going on, who's really interested in the birds, who really cares about the birds, who communicates with us regularly, makes all the difference both for us as banders, but also for that particular site as a whole,” she said.
For Freeman, his childhood hopes of working with birds have become reality.
“It's fulfilled a lifelong dream to be able to work with peregrine falcons and actually be working with them at the nest box and having them banded by Amy [Ries] and Raptor Resource Project, so I'm very happy, and I think my employer is very happy," he said. "I put us on the map in a good way.”
To hear more this conversation, listen to Talk of Iowa, hosted by Charity Nebbe. Samantha McIntosh produced this episode.
