Observer: Bridge workers caused abandonment of peregrine-falcon nest
Three men who were part of a work crew on the Girard Point Bridge are on trial, accused of lying to authorities about a worker.
ON THE AFTERNOON of June 4, 2011, one of the peregrine falcons nesting on the Girard Point Bridge was "flying around in distress," a falcon observer told a federal jury this week.
Two workers were close enough to reach out and touch a nest box under the bridge, Art McMorris testified.
"The bird continued to fly around, then it landed on an outrigger," a projecting beam, where it could watch both the nest and the workers, McMorris said.
McMorris, of the Pennsylvania Game Commission, was hired to monitor the falcons by a general contractor on the bridge-refurbishment project. He testified before jurors Wednesday and yesterday about what he saw and photographed from about 1:15 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. that June 4 when he was on the ground near the south end of the bridge, which carries Interstate 95 across the Schuylkill.
When he left, the falcon had not returned to the nest. The next day, he didn't see the male or female falcon. A few days later, he again didn't see either falcon. "What I saw was an abandoned, unhatched egg in the nest box," he said.
Peregrine falcons are protected under federal law and are on the state's endangered-species list.
As part of a contract to refurbish the bridge, Liberty-Alpha Joint Venture, one of the companies on the project, had agreed not to work near the falcons' nesting spot during the nesting season.
Three men who were part of the joint venture are now on trial in federal court: Nikolaos Frangos, the boss; George Capuzello, a painting foreman; and Mikhail Zubialevich, a worker.
They are not charged with any bird-related offenses, but rather with lying to authorities about the presence of one of the two workers who was in the restricted area that day.
The feds contend that Zubialevich, a U.S. resident from Belarus, and Walter Morgan, who was an illegal immigrant from Honduras, were the workers in the restricted area.
They contend that because Capuzello and Frangos didn't want authorities to know they had hired an illegal immigrant, they concocted a plan to have another worker pretend that he - and not Morgan - was in the restricted area.
That other worker, Joseph Warren, told jurors Wednesday that he went along with the plan even though he felt uneasy about it. But last year, after being approached by a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service agent, he decided that he had to tell the truth, he said.