With collaborators Joe Barnes of the Nevada Department of Wildlife and Shawn Gerstenberger of The University of Nevada at Las Vegas we have published our most recent assessment of mercury in feathers we collected 2009-2015 from migrating peregrines at Assateague (MD) and South Padre (TX) Islands. We detected mercury in all sampled fourth primary (range = 0.44–37.46 lg/g) and axillary feathers (range = 0.09–62.68 lg/g). The concentration associated with toxic effects in peregrines is unknown; however, peregrines have recently experienced broad population expansion across the presumed breeding area (northern latitudes of North America) of the birds we sampled. The mercury concentrations we measured were lower than those in an apparently healthy breeding population in the southwestern USA. The literature citation follows, and a PDF is available in Publications, under the About Us tab.
Barnes, J.G., G.E. Doney, M.A. Yates, W.S. Seegar, and S.L. Gerstenberger. 2019. A Broadscale Assessment of Mercury Contamination in Peregrine Falcons Across the Northern Latitudes of North America. J. Raptor Res. 53(1):1-13.