• All four of the Berkeley falcon chicks have now taken their first flights, with the fourth and final chick taking flight just before noon Tuesday. The first to fly was the male named Eclipse who had his first flight on Saturday, with female Sol taking her first flight this morning, followed by the female Aurora just before 11:30 am (seen above), and the last male Nox moments later. [CalFalconCam via Twitter]
• The food desert of the Bayview District is getting a new grocery store on Wednesday, and every single item on the shelves will be free. It’s called the District 10 Community Market, and it’s exclusively for qualifying low-income residents of Bayview-Hunters Point, Potrero Hill, Sunnydale, and Visitacion Valley. [Examiner]
• The Chronicle’s Soleil Ho is the latest to pen yet another of those “Why I Left San Francisco” essays, but really they just moved to Berkeley where the rent is cheaper. [Chronicle]
• Elizabeth Holmes’s appeal was heard at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Tuesday, but only her attorneys were present, because after all she’s off in a Texas prison. [Bay Area News Group]
• Oakland A’s relief pitcher Michael Kelly was suspended an entire season for gambling, even though the gambling occurred back in 2021 when he was in the minor leagues, and he only wagered a measly $99.22. [KQED]

Image: moon_rabbit_rising via Instagram

It’s a baby falcon bonanza this spring for those who love fluffy little raptors, as a second peregrine falcon livestream is now up and running from a nest on Alcatraz, and the mama falcon there was actually born to Berkeley falcon Annie in 2018.  

Bay Area birders’ eyes are currently transfixed on the annual rite of the Berkeley baby falcon nest cam, with its April hatchings and fast-growing chicks’ adventures in May. But you may recall there used to be a second falcon nest cam atop the former PG&E building on Beale Street in downtown San Francisco, giving us a few years with our choice of two different falcon nest cams. Though alas, SF’s PG&E falcon webcam went dark in 2021 when PG&E moved its headquarters to Oakland.

Yet now, the Bay Area once again has the embarrassment of riches brought by two separate falcon nest cams. The Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy just launched a peregrine falcon nest cam on Alcatraz island, where four baby falcons have recently hatched.

The Alcatraz falcon nest cam can be seen below, and it streams 24/7.

The mother of this brood is named Larry (short for the element Lawrencium, named for UC Berkeley scientist Ernesto Lawrence). And Larry is the daughter of famed Berkeley Campanile nest cam falcon Annie, born to Annie and her then-partner Grinnell in 2018. Larry and her unnamed partner have four falcons this year, just as they also hatched four last year, but last year there was no such webcam on Alcatraz to watch it happen.

“This all started as a ‘what if’ when I was watching the CalFalcons webcam, wondering ‘how cool would it be to have a livestream of the Alcatraz falcon nest?’. I’m thrilled this became a reality thanks to all the collaborators from the NPS and the Parks Conservancy who helped see this through to the end,” Alcatraz Island biologist Lidia D’Amico said in a press release. “I hope this livestream generates appreciation for peregrine falcons and sparks viewers’ interest in the other bird life found on Alcatraz as well.”

The Alcatraz falcon webcam only has one angle, though it broadcasts in HD even after dark. According to the National Park Service, “The livestream has a 12-hour cache, allowing viewers to catch up on parts they may have missed.”

The Alcatraz falcons are a little older (by a couple weeks) than the Berkeley falcons, but their nest cam delivers every bit as much cuteness. Yet it remains to be seen if the Alcatraz cam provides as much falcon soap-opera romance drama as Annie has on the Berkeley cam, what with all of her many male partners she’s had over the last couple years.

Related: Photos: Two Baby Falcon Chicks Hatch on Berkeley Falcon Cam, and on Earth Day to Boot [SFist]

Image: via National Park Service

Image: @CalFalconCam via Twitter

That’s two newborn baby falcons just after hatching beneath their mom Annie atop the Berkeley Campanile on Monday morning, and two more little hatchlings are expected to bust out of their shells in the days to come.  

It is now late April, when SFist readers’ fancy turns to those baby falcon eggs getting ready to hatch, broadcast live on the Cal Falcons Nest Cam atop the UC Berkeley Campanile. And on Earth Day 2024, April 22 at around 8 am, the first of this year’s four baby falcons hatched.

As seen below, a second one hatched at around 10:30 am Monday. They are a wet, sloppy mess at first. And mother Annie does not want to get off the newborns, as they need their warmth in those first crucial couple hours after hatching.

“The chick will dry off quickly and its down feathers will turn into a warm, cozy pile of fluff,” the folks at the Berkeley Falcon Cam explain. “Annie will occasionally nibble on egg shells. It helps her regain the calcium she used to create the egg (which is leached from her bones)."

The chicks’ transformation into warm, cozy piles of fluff happens quickly! SFist happened to be staring at the Cal Falcons Nest Cam livestream when the two hatchlings got their first feeding at about 3 pm Monday, and we got a look at what these five-hour-old chicks have already grown into.

Obviously, we are going to embed way too many of these photos in this post, because these images are unbelievable… and very cute!

And check out proud father Archie bringing the chicks their first meal.

You can watch the Cal Falcons Nest Cam livestream online, though not usually much happens this early in the chicks’ lives, except for one of their parents sitting on them. But you may also encounter a really magic moment should luck cooperate.

Again, two more baby falcons will hatch in the days to come. As Berkeleyside reminds us, there will be a Wednesday big-screen watch party on the outdoor screen at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) from 9 am to 7 pm Wednesday at Oxford and Addison streets in Berkeley.

Note: This is a developing story and may be updated if more baby falcon chicks hatch today.

Related: Berkeley Falcon Annie Has, Yet Again, Taken a New Mate, Naming Contest to Come [SFist]

Image: Berkeley Falcon Cam

Image: CalFalconCam via Twitter

Celebrity Berkeley falcon Annie’s new mate Lou has shown another gesture of unusually attentive fatherhood, bringing the hatchlings food, even though they’re still not hatched and can’t eat it yet.

When we last checked in the love lives of the famed peregrine falcons atop the Berkeley Campanile (who are famed because of the live 24/7 webcam recording their nest) there were two eggs in their annual springtime hatch, with a third believed to be on the way. But hey-o! As seen below, there are now four eggs in the nest, and according to the Cal Falcons raptor experts who maintain the webcam, the “Estimated hatch day is April 11th.”

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The new father in the roost is named Lou, and he’s a fairly recent addition to longtime Berkeley Falcon Annie’s rotating cast of mates. (Her five-year mate Grinnell was found dead in March 2022, Annie quickly rebounded with a new mate Alden, but he hasn’t been seen since November.) Now we see Lou has taken up the fatherly task of trying to feed the li’l hatchlings, not realizing that they can’t eat the food because they haven't hatched yet, and he may be unclear on how all of this works.

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We should cut Lou some slack, as it is believed this is the first time he’s a father. (Whereas it’s Annie’s seventh season as a mother.) But as the video below shows, he’s a rather attentive father, offering to do extra incubating so Annie can have more “her” time.

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There's been additional falcon drama at the campanile, as a separate unattached female tried to raid the nest last week, and a passerby photographer caught the melee in a multiple-image Instagram post. “To my eye it looks like another adult unbanded female,” the photographer posted. “Annie wasn’t having it and was on it immediately. I hear all sorts of racket and alarm calls as the two faced off right outside the west balcony.”

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“It appears in one of the photos that Annie actually gets her talon on the other falcon’s tail feathers,” the post continues. “After the interaction near the west balcony they took to the sky and flew NW calling as they flew. Lou came out too and joined in the fray flying under the visitor. They chased the visitor away.”

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of trying to hatch and raise a cauldron of baby peregrine falcons. Again, these chicks are expected to start hatching April 11, and if things go as last year, they'll be flying by late June.

Related: Annie, Berkeley's Celebrity Falcon, Has Yet Another New Mate, as Bird Soap Opera Continues [SFist]

Image; @CalFalconCam via Twitter

Photo: Cal Falcons

The “soap opera” of the Berkeley peregrine falcons may be turning into a love triangle, as the female Annie is courting a new mate while the male Grinnell recovers from injury.

Those of you paying attention to the peregrine falcon nest atop the UC Berkeley Campanile (the clock tower) may know that the male falcon Grinnell was badly injured in a fight last week, and is recovering at the Lindsay Wildlife Rehabilitation Hospital in Walnut Creek. But the female Annie does not know this, and she may believe he is dead. And now Berkeleyside brings us the news that Annie appears to have moved on, and is courting a new male — likely the same male who maimed her mate.

This was discussed in an hour-long falcon update on Youtube Friday, where three ornithologists took questions from the falcons’ fans. “Grinnell was injured by probably another falcon, definitely a raptor,” Berkeley Ph.D. candidate Sean Peterson said in the webcast. “We have kind of a secondhand report of someone seeing three falcons fighting the day that he was hurt, so it’s kind of looking  like he was in a fight with two other peregrine falcons.”

That webcast cut to the Berkeley falcon nestcam several times, where Annie could be seen showing signs of courtship with toward a new male, who was likely Grinnell’s attacker. “We just saw Annie doing a little bit of a scrape right there, already showing some interest in nesting,” said Sherrill Cook, a falcon specialist at the Lindsay Hospital where Grinnell is staying.

“She’s been doing breeding behaviors more with the new guy in the picture,” Peterson added. “I think she is kind of showing that she’s receptive to his courtship.”

The injured male Grinnell is still recovering from a busted beak, which will grow back, a wing wound that needed sutures, and a parasitic disease called capillariasis. But it appears he’ll be fine. “To be safe, I’d say he’ll be released in no longer than a month, hopefully, but it could be as short as two weeks,” Cook said in the webcast.  The question now is what happens when they do let him back out.

“When Grinnell is released, we just don’t know if he’s going to go back to the territory, or if he’s going to try to go somewhere else, or if he goes back to the territory, if he’ll try to compete and how he’ll do,” according to Peterson. “And I don’t think we really know how Annie will respond to him being back in type picture as well. She may just let the two males duke it out and see who the victor is.”

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If you want to play ‘Hot or Not?’ with the two male falcons, both are seen above. Grinnell is on the left, and the yet-unnamed ‘new guy’ is on the right.

Related: Patriarch Peregrine Falcon in UC Berkeley Campanile Nest Injured In a Fight [SFist]

Image: @cal_falcons via Instagram

Yesterday afternoon, one of the young female falcons that adorn the roof at San Jose City Hall (named Ilahay, which is "angel" in Persian) took her first flight. According to the Mercury News, the falcon "flew over the Martin Luther King Jr. library with ease, but had a little difficulty on her first landing." While reporting on the flight progress of said baby bird's siblings, the Mercury News goes on to call the Ilahay's mother a slut, saying, "Falcon siblings Kya, Tierra and Veer -- all named by San Jose school children -- have not yet been as brave as their sister yet, and have stayed on the 18th floor ledge of City Hall, where their mother and her series of boyfriends and offspring were first noted in 2007." What a tramp. Anyway, bird watchers have since swamped Falcon Cam in record numbers, eager to see the famed bird's flying.