Dairyland Power's Peregrine Falcon Restoration Program
Dairyland’s Peregrine Falcon Restoration Program began in the 1990s and, since then, 164 falcons have fledged from the Alma and Genoa sites combined! This is a great testament to the power of collaboration between industry and the environment.
Check out a news article about successful partnerships Dairyland has been part of to support the return of Peregrine Falcons to the Driftless Region: Peregrine falcon population rebounds in Wisconsin, Minnesota (lacrossetribune.com)
2025 Nesting Season
On March 26, an unbanded falcon was spotted in Dairyland's falcon box in Alma with one egg. The bird is unbanded, leading biologists to believe it is a returning bird from the 2024 nesting season. Peregrine falcon pairs work together incubating and, later, feeding the chicks; female Peregrine falcons are larger than males.
About 40 days after hatching (late April/early May), the chicks' legs are full grown, but they are unable to fly. This is the ideal time for Dairyland and the Raptor Resource Project to band the chicks using tags with codes on them to denote the sex and banding location of each falcon. These codes help track and monitor birds after they fledge.
You can follow the progress of the clutch (falcon chicks) via Dairyland's Falcon Cam below:
2024 Nesting Season Summary
The 2024 nesting pair of falcons produced a clutch of three chicks in early May. In June, the two female chicks and one male chick were banded by the Raptor Resource Project team, Dairyland’s Environmental Biologist Ben Campbell and Environmental Specialist II Andy Thomes.
Unfortunately, one of falcon chicks later died. The falcon was retrieved from the nesting box and delivered to the Raptor Resource Project for testing to determine the cause of death. The other two falcon chicks were healthy and successfully fledged (left) the nest.
Falcons remain near Alma until October, but are not always near the nest box. They migrate to South America each fall with juvenile falcons staying there for the first two years of their lives before returning to North America to mate. Mated pairs tend to return to the same location to nest as long as both falcons are still alive.