The Birdman of New York Hospital has flown the coop.
Dr. John Aronian, a transplant surgeon who spent the last decade nurturing one of the city’s 12 pairs of endangered peregrine falcons on a 24th-floor ledge, has retired, leaving Red Red and P.J. to fend for their themselves.
“They’ll be fine,” Aronian said. “They’re great animals.”
Aronian stayed around long enough to participate in an annual rite of spring, the banding of Red Red and P.J.’s chicks. Every spring, the Department of Environmental Protection fastens a coded band onto the leg of every peregrine falcon chick, to enable future tracking.
Red Red’s two babies were the first to be banded this year. The operation is always tense, as DEP biologist Chris Nadareski, clad in protective gear and a motorcycle helmet, climbs out on the ledge to borrow the chicks.
As Red Red (so named because she was born at Cornell University – whose color is red – and now lives at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center) and P.J. dive-bombed the baby snatcher, Nadareski snared the two chicks and brought them inside for banding.
With 12 nesting pairs of peregrines around the city, DEP officials anticipate a nice-sized brood of 36 chicks.
This is the critical time for the offspring, Aronian said, because in the next few weeks, they’ll be taking their first flights. Typically, those baby steps are hardly the majestic journeys taken by their parents.
“They jump off the ledge and usually fall straight down,” Aronian said. “I’ve found them on the hospital grounds and had to bring them back up in the elevator. That’s why they call me The Birdman.”
Red Red and P.J. are celebrating their 10th anniversary, but they might never have hooked up had Red Red’s previous paramour, Buster, not disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1988.
The next year, P.J. – a native of Cheyenne, Wyo., according to his band – arrived. The two have been inseparable since, producing 35 offspring and helping, in their own small way, to shore up the endangered breed.
Forty years ago, when the federal government began its restoration program, there wasn’t a pair of peregrines east of the Mississippi. But now that the program is an apparent success, the feds are considering taking peregrines off the endangered list. The move is strongly opposed by state environmental officials as premature.