There's some sad news out of Berkeley, where the fourth of four young falcons hatched this spring atop the UC Berkeley Campanile tower has died following a July injury.

We won't ever know how Nox, short for Equinox, was injured. But in early July, the young bird was found in distress at the Berkeley Marina, and falcon watchers have been following his progress ever since. He was found on a boat, Berkeleyside reported, and some speculated he may have collided with a boat mast.

Nox was taken to UC Davis, where he was undergoing rehabilitation at the California Raptor Center. He was released back into the wild last Friday, but was again found in distress, and apparently he was never able to fully regain his strength, and UC Davis announced the bird's death Thursday morning.

"We are deeply saddened to receive the news from UC Davis that Nox passed away last night," the Cal Falcons account on X writes. "They will be performing a post-mortem to determine the cause of death, which is still unknown."

The group notes that this is an especially significant loss for the falcon-watching community, given that mom Annie had never successfully hatched a fourth egg in all her eight breeding seasons on the Campanile, watched over by a live camera feed. She had typically laid a fourth egg that never hatched, and Nox seemed like an extra falcon-baby miracle this time around.

"Losing him is incredibly difficult, especially with how much work he and his human caretakers put in to return to the wild from his initial injury," Cal Falcons writes. "We will all always treasure the moments we had with him."

That initial injury came on or around July 5, when he was found at the Berkeley Marina and rescued by Bay Raptor Rescue.

As Cal Falcons environmental biologist Sean Peterson told UC Berkeley News, this early stage of a falcon's life "is a very hard time in the wild. The average mortality rate is about 50% in the first year of life for a wild bird."

Nox had been the last of the four siblings to try his hand at solo flying back on July 4. All four fledglings took their first flights that day, just over two months after hatching, with Nox's older brother Eclipse going first, followed by sisters Sol and Aurora.

Nox was the youngest of the couple dozen offspring of Annie, along with the new mate she found this past winter, whom the falcon watchers named Archie. Annie's mate of five years, Grinnell, was killed in what appeared to be a vehicle collision in downtown Berkeley in March 2022.

Back in May, we got to see the hatching of another peregrine falcon brood on Alcatraz, via live cam, wh0 are actually Annie's grand-chicks.

Previously: Photos: Two Baby Falcon Chicks Hatch on Berkeley Falcon Cam, and on Earth Day to Boot