None of the four rare eggs delicately moved May 9 from the Laviolette Bridge in Trois-Rivières in a daring operation to Montreal hatched.
“Unfortunately, the moved eggs did not hatch on the Mercier Bridge,” Transport and Sustainable Mobility spokesperson Gilles Payer said in a message to The Gazette late Friday.
Even with cameras it is difficult to say what happened to the eggs, Payer said. Experts have floated the theory the two fell out of the box after getting stuck to the resident birds owing to humidity.
They were abandoned by the adoptive parents, who they themselves had produced non-fertile eggs this spring.
Biologists speculated the eggs may have had genetic defects or the adoptive parents did not correctly cover the eggs to keep them warm, Payer said.
The fact humans handled the eggs in an attempt to re-engineer mother nature could also be a factor for them not hatching, officials concede. The eggs were taken from their Laviolette Bridge parents because they were too close to the massive construction underway on the bridge.
“It is, thus, a sad outcome of an operation designed to give the eggs the best possible chance, which does not mean the operation itself was a bad decision,” Payer said.
“It is not possible to know whether the eggs would have hatched left untouched on the Laviolette Bridge without human intervention given the hazards of the wild and the possibility of genetic defects.”
He stressed the ministry sought the guidance of specialists at Falcon Environment, which has a successful track record in such operations, although such a daring transfer was a first.
“Everyone had confidence in the process,” Payer said, adding the ministry every year takes steps to avoid cohabitation conflicts between wildlife and construction sites.
The fastest birds in the world, peregrine falcons have nested for years on the Laviolette Bridge (and the Mercier,) but this is the first time the ministry has tried a switcheroo.
Payer said initially it looked like the transfer would work because the adoptive parents keenly took to their parenting duties when the eggs arrived.
But bird lovers started wondering about the eggs when it appeared several were missing on the camera channel. At one point, recently only one egg was visible.
The federal Crown corporation that manages the Champlain, Jacques-Cartier and Mercier Bridges has issued statements in the past on successful peregrine falcon events, noting recently since 2011 34 “perfectly healthy baby falcons” have hatched on its structures.
Considered a vulnerable species by the government of Quebec, peregrine falcons had declined to near extinction in most areas of the world. Studies linked their failure to reproduce to contamination by pesticides and especially DDT, which caused eggshell thinning.
Thrilling to watch in action, the predators at the top of the food chain made a comeback on every continent, but are closely monitored by wildlife officials around the world.