one named Peter, one named Paul

[extemporanea]

There's a pair of peregrine falcons nesting on a ledge on the hospital across the road from our house: I hear them screaming a lot. (This is a sound hotwired into childhood memories, from exposure to my dad's falcons for approximately the first twenty years of my life). I don't often see the actual birds, but yesterday there were two suspiciously

Comments

[dragonroost]

cool, i did not know we even had peregrine falcons here =)

[extemporanea]

Peregrines get around ;> - they're found (thinly - they're a threatened species) pretty much all over the world, and this entry mentions a reasonably high concentration in the south-western Cape. Apparently they're fairly prone to nesting on the pseudo-cliff-faces of tall buildings in cities, where the pigeon populations have to be bloody easy to catch. David M once saw one of the hospital pair take a pigeon in the parking lot just in front of him.

Falcons

[anonymous]

Very juvenile male Peregrines. ...probably their first flight, having settled in a low tree because flying skill and strength did not allow them to climb to the higher nest height yet. The loud noise was probably them asking for food from parents. ...JT

Re: Falcons

[extemporanea]

hah! thought so, the behaviour was all juvenile, and not, one has to say, madly intelligent. Sometimes one wonders how baby birds survive at all. Thank you, papa!

[bronchitikat]

The migration of peregrine falcons from proper cliffs to the urban cliffs of skyscrapers & ecclesiastical architecture is one of the success stories of the late 20th & early 21st century. Apparently, in the UK, they even nest in various bits of electricity pylons!

I daresay there are pairs nearer here but the famous pair in our area nest in the spire of Chichester Cathedral. The RSPB puts up a nestcam & stall in the grounds every year so interested people can go along & view the ickle fluffy things as they progress. By the time of the Chichester Festivities (first couple of weeks in July) they young ones are at the 'practising flying & screaming a lot' stage.

This pair have nested successfully the past eight years, raising at least two chicks each year. Having said which, the gardens attached to the Bishop Bell tearooms, the Close & Cathedral environs still have a pretty large population of feral pigeons, wood pigeons & collared doves, also smaller birds. So the peregrines aren't doing that much damage, for all the success &

Peregrine eyasses

[anonymous]

The peregrine recovery story is quite interesting. In the UK and USA their populations are now higher than pre-DDT (the agric chemicals,esp DDT, accumulated in birds and thus their predators). UK population crashed to 25%; usa similar. They are still quite rare in France though protected. There were little more than a dozen pairs in the eastern Cape 20 years ago when the falconers began putting nesting boxes on all tall buildings, and structures. They now estimate that there could be as many as 200 pairs. ...JT

[herne_kzn]

Breast markings look right for not-quite-adult best-named-birds-ever.
I am beaming