The falcons of the towers

A NEST BOX ABOUT 1993 · SIXTY-THREE CHICKS, 2003–2025

The tenants: For more than two decades, the fastest animals on earth have raised their young on South Bend's tallest buildings. The story begins with a box: a South Bend Tribune photograph from 2002, its caption preserved in the newspaper index, shows a peregrine falcon perched "next to the nesting box placed there nine years ago" atop the Tower Building downtown — a box placed about 1993, in the years when Indiana's reintroduction program was putting peregrines back on the state's tall buildings. The Midwest Peregrine Society's Indiana nesting reports then carry the South Bend territory — listed as "City-County/Tower Building," for its two successive homes — continuously from 2003 to 2025, and the 2025 report totals the territory's production: sixty-three chicks fledged across those years. The birds moved their residence in the meantime, from the Tower Building to the County-City Building, and the reports moved the listing's name with them.

Sources:

1. The Local Animals section of this history — the Midwest Peregrine Society's Indiana nesting reports (the South Bend territory carried continuously 2003–2025; sixty-three chicks fledged; the move from the Tower Building to the County-City Building) and the South Bend Tribune photograph caption of 2002 (the falcon beside the nest box placed about 1993).