Students at Oak Creek's Carollton Elementary School got as close to a peregrine falcon as they could possibly get without touching the soon-to-be majestic birds.
"It was very cool," said fifth grader Abby Duchemin. "How we saw them banding it. They were very loud and crazy."
A falconer and WE Energies biologist banded the falcons that have grown up in a nest box at WE Energies' Oak Creek power plant.
"The bands are very lightweight aluminum," said WE Energies biologist Mike Grisar. "They're fitted and sized. Males get a little bit smaller band. For females we'll use a bit bigger band."
Falconer Greg Septon says the bands serve as visual trackers. "It allows us to follow these birds for their entire lifetime but also, if one ends up dead, we can do a necropsy and find out what killed it."
"There's one female nested here named Atlanta. She produced 41 young during her lifetime and I banded all of them," Septon said.
The students clearly enjoyed their role as apprentice falconers, and the hope is they will get inspired as Septon once did.
"Maybe there's a kid out there that 10-15 years from now will be as nuts as I am and want to do the same thing and carry on, which is what you really want," he said.
Those interested kids can now monitor the falcons' development via WE Energies web cams.
"It'll be a few weeks until they take off and start flying," said WE Energies spokesperson Amy Jahns. "They're not quite ready to go yet but keep watching. It's fun!"
WE Energies will be doing more banding this week at their power plants in Port Washington and Pleasant Prairie.
