Where your support goes
Peregrine falcons nearly disappeared from Michigan due to DDT. Through decades of work by falconers, biologists, and dedicated volunteers, they came back — nesting today on the bridges and buildings of Detroit, Grand Rapids, Lansing, and cities across the state.
The Michigan Falcon Project exists to make sure that recovery holds. We monitor active nests, coordinate annual banding of chicks with licensed bird banders, assist grounded juveniles to licensed rehabilitators, and contribute field data to the Midwest Peregrine Society each season.
Your donation funds that work directly — boots on the ground, eyes on the nests, every season.
Nest Monitoring
Tracking active nests across Michigan while maintaining relationships with building owners, property contacts, and citizen scientists.
Eyas Banding
Every spring, MFP will be on rooftops and bridge towers across Michigan, coordinating the banding of peregrine chicks with licensed bird banders. We will help purchase color marker bands for every chick — a small piece of aluminum with an enormous payoff. A banded bird can be tracked across its entire lifespan, contributing data to peregrine research for decades.
Brancher Rescue
When a young peregrine goes down, we're the first call. We recover grounded juveniles and place them with licensed rehabilitators across Michigan. These partners absorb the real cost of care — housing, veterinary attention, and feeding a bird that eats like a falcon — and your donations help us support them in that work.
Nest Box Program
Michigan's peregrines nest on our tallest buildings and longest bridges, and the nest boxes that protect their eggs don't maintain themselves. We work directly with property owners and facilities managers to install and maintain boxes at active sites across the state — turning Michigan's skyline into a network of protected nesting habitat.
Nest Cameras
Watching a peregrine chick take its first flight from a Detroit rooftop is something most people will never experience in person. We're working toward deploying nest cameras at active Michigan sites — bringing that moment to anyone with an internet connection and giving researchers a valuable new monitoring tool in the process.
Public Education & Outreach
The best protection a raptor can have is a public that knows it's there. We bring Michigan's birds of prey into classrooms, community events, and nest sites across the state — turning curious bystanders into informed advocates for the birds living alongside them.