Home > Education Program > Oracle Falcons Story

The Oracle Falcons Story

A software engineer employed at Oracle Corporation in Redwood Shores first noticed that peregrine falcons were perching on campus buildings in late 1999. When it appeared that they might be courting, he and other Oracle employees contacted the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group.

We observed the birds and determined that they were attempting to nest atop the Oracle Campus building at 400 Oracle Parkway. We built a nestbox that would provide minimal shelter and shade for nesting birds and filled the base with four hundred pounds of course aquarium gravel—a substrate we used for decades while breeding the falcons in our aviaries to assist with t he population recovery.

Oracle personnel mounted two cameras at the nest box and hosted a website where the nesting falcons could be viewed. The falcons moved right in.

We determined through close observation that both pair members were banded with black, “visual identification” or VID bands of the type that the Predatory Bird Research Group normally applies to young we release. By reading the coded letters on the bands, we determined that the falcons originated from two different nests on the Bay Bridge. Our records showed that both had been removed as three week old chicks in the spring of 1998 and 1999 and released as six week old fledglings at release or “hack” sites (link to “hacking” description) along the coast.   Amazingly, these two birds found one another at a place they determined to be a suitable “cliff” for nesting—the Oracle Campus overlooking the San Francisco Bay and nearby Baylands Reserve.

The falcons hatched one chick in 2000; two in 2001; and three chicks in 2002. Live streaming video provided by Oracle allowed the public to witness the entire process of egg-laying to fledging. Oracle employees and other observers were able to watch the falcons from locations around the Oracle Campus lake. In one instance that we recorded, the pair left the nest ledge together and flew toward San Francisco Bay. We saw them stoop toward the ground and then return to the 400 Oracle Parkway building in just two minutes with food for their youngsters!

We are deeply grateful to Oracle for hosting this opportunity for the public to view nature in action and for their continued support of the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group education and outreach program. To date we have delivered talks including the Oracle Falcons Story to more than 30,000 children and adults. We train college student interns to assist in the release of falcons at our release sites and gain valuable "real world" experience as field biologists involved in our work. We train volunteer citizen scientists and professional biologists to participate in our annual peregrine falcon nesting survey.  We host a discussion group linked to the peregrine falcon nest camera that is available for the tens of thousands of people each week who watch the falcons on our nest cameras during the nesting season.