Of Love & Raptors

One of those great real-life-but-sounds-like-a-movie stories:

Falcons need help with their love life.

Just ask Dr. Jane Goodall, of the unimpeachable wildlife knowledge credentials.  One of the many books she write talked in part about the alarming plummet in raptor populations worldwide due to pesticide etc. use, and how tremendously difficult it is to help falcon pairs with their dating life so as to increase chances   of breeding.  The very funny scene in recent animated movie "Rio" when the macaw pair didn't take to each other and got some help from scientists to set the mood, with a disco ball and Lionel Richie's "Say You, Say Me", is apparently not all that far from the truth.

It turns out some falcon couples can manage just fine by themselves, after all - if they have a secret weapon.  That secret weapon is choice of real estate.  Turns out, "location, location, location" is just as important for our feathered friends as it is for us.

A falcon pair decided to nest, of all places, on a concrete windowsill of mega-publisher Harlequin's corporate headquarters in Toronto.  Not romantic, say you?  Think again, say the pair.  They've now produced chicks Blaze, Amorata, and Mira and have a twitter & live cam following #harlequinfalcons.

Love conquers all, as Harlequin's unofficial motto may always have been, including - or maybe especially - for species hovering at extinction.