[Tweeters] Ruth Taylor

[Patti Loesche]

Hello, Tweeters,

Ruth Taylor, a valued member of the raptor community, died Saturday. Ruth had been in memory care since 2018, but long before Alzheimer’s, her mind was taken over by her love of raptors and especially peregrine falcons.

Ruth was not only another victim of Bud Anderson’s hawkwatching course, she was deeply involved in Bud’s Seattle Peregrine Project since the early '90s, when peregrines started showing up again in the Seattle area. In 1994, the first nesting pair in the state was found by Ruth and Ed Deal on the same day in downtown Seattle. The birds nested at the top of the former WAMU building, now 1201 3rd Ave. That site has been active almost every year since.

As coordinator of the Seattle Peregrine Project, Ruth was the voice of the “peregrine hotline.” In those pre-internet days, people phoned 654-4423 and recorded their observations on the answering machine. Ruth shared updates in her outgoing messages. She also observed and took notes on the nesting pair throughout the breeding seasons, watching hundreds of hours of videotape and the on-site WAMU falcon cam (again, no internet). When Bell, the second breeding female at WAMU and the magnificent matriarch of many seasons, died in 2005, it was Ruth who found her. Ruth was an accomplished wildlife photographer and took iconic photos of these early downtown peregrines. Some of these, and more about the early history of the WAMU peregrines, can be found here: https://urbanraptor.org/seattle-peregrine-falcon-project/

At Seattle Audubon (now Birds Connect Seattle), Ruth was in one of the earliest Master Birding classes. She was also on SAS’s conservation and newsletter committees and wrote for the newsletter, EarthCare Northwest—on peregrines, of course.

Ruth’s falcon memories were the last to go. Even as her disease progressed, her friend and caregiver Glen wrote, "It was amazing to see the retained acuity for the falcons and all things raptor. When things got discouraging or situations too frustrating for her to navigate alone, a simple question about her birds would be an immediate ground for her.”

Patti Loesche & Ellen Blackstone