Aylesbury Peregrines
You are looking at the nest site of a pair of Peregrine Falcons, situated on the 12th floor of the Buckinghamshire Council building in Aylesbury town centre.
Peregrines are the fastest animal on the planet and can reach speeds in excess of 200mph.
They are an apex predator who catch and kill live birds on the wing - as such the footage here may contain gory images.
Peregrines first appeared on County Hall in 2007 and the nest platform was erected in 2010. They first attempted to breed in 2011 and birds have been present ever since.
The female is larger and greyer than the male. Our current male has a metal ring on his leg but we don't know where he is from.
Peregrines are awesome and exhilarating birds! We are very lucky to be able to watch these wonderful birds up close and personal.
A nightmare yesterday when the younger chick fell from the platform, landing on the upper ground floor roof of the building.
Thank You to those who rang the council/ Tiggiwinkles.
John in security did an amazing job in catching it and once it was checked over he managed to get it back onto the ledge by the platform, at this point the bird was very lively and feisty. Unfortunately since then it hasn't looked good, so presumably it has an internal injury. It's survived the night, but I'm not sure if it's eaten anything and this is the only way it gets fluids. Now it's flaked out just cooking in this blooming heat !!
So it doesn't look good at present, we can just hope.
To try and rescue it again now is out of the question as it's sibling is likely to jump !!
Fingers crossed.
Mike
Sorry for the lack of updates- been a bit hectic of late.
Our two chicks hatched on the same day- 4th June, considering they are 2 weeks old today- they are growing fast.
With only two the adults are no doubt finding it very easy to feed them and you may have noticed the adults staching food.
They are taking a lot of Starlings at present, all juvenile ones as far as I can see, but other interesting prey in the last week or so has been Great Spotted Woodpecker and Ring-necked Parakeet.
The plan is to put rings on the chicks in the evening of Friday 26th, so please don't be alarmed if you see a human (me) appear on camera or that the chicks are missing for a short while.
Some more warm weather ahead for the birds to deal with, but they'll be fine :)
Enjoy the spectacle
Mike
The long sit continues- and it's hot to be sitting there today. The female was sort of stood over the eggs this morning panting, thankfully they're not in the sun after mid-morning.
The interesting breeding season has continued for our pair, as we are now down to 3 eggs. Early morning on the 7th May the male stood up off the eggs, picked one up which was broken, flew away briefly before returning, the female was clearly perplexed as to the goings on. Why the egg broke we don't know, possibly an inexperienced male and he stood on it ? Whichever way, it's down to 3 now, and one of those is from the first clutch, so my view would be we have a chance of 2 hatching, let's hope so.
You can see a few Peregrine feathers appearing on and around the platform, this is completely normal. Peregrines clearly can't be flightless !! So they moult gradually, replacing feathers as they go. It's likely that most of these feathers will belong to the female, as she predominantly carries out incubation and the male can hunt.
Further Bucks Peregrine news -
High Wycombe - All four chicks doing well and have clambered out of their nest platform.
StadiumMK - All three eggs have hatched and all three chicks doing well.
All being well we'll hopefully see eggs hatching this week.
Enjoy
Mike
Well the season is interesting to say the least, really incredible stuff !
Here follows a summary of the season so far -
In around Jan / Feb a new male (no metal ring) was paired with the resident female, the metal ringed male has not been seen since.
This new male and the female were seen copulating/ pair bonding.
28th March - 1st egg laid.
31st March - 2nd egg laid.
On the 2nd April a dead female Peregrine was found in Southcourt, Aylesbury. She is believed to be one of an intruding pair that arrived in the town.
On the 3rd April there had clearly been a huge fight and the gravel and the 2 eggs on the platform were displaced/ buried. A new male was seen wearing a red ring on his left leg.
The battle for the nest site intensified over the following days, culminating in a massive fight on the platform on the 9th April.
The resident male was ousted, and the new male with the red ring paired with the resident female, they were soon copulating.
2nd Clutch !!
28th April- 1st egg laid.
29th April - the female recovered one of the original eggs and rolled it into the scrape ! So whilst there were 2 eggs on this date by 7pm, one was one from March !
On this date- incredibly- a 2CY male was sitting on top of the box, observing the female recovering the egg, all captured on the feed. Could this bird be one of the young from last year ? If not, why would the female tolerate it being there ?
1st May - now 3 eggs, another laid.
4th May - 4 eggs, another laid.
Currently 4 eggs, which includes the recovered egg laid in March.
There is a possibility that a 4th egg could be laid in this 2nd clutch.
I wouldn't expect the egg laid in March and now in the scrape to hatch, but there's been so much going on this season- you never know !!
The current pair is our resident female and our new 'red-ringed' male.
Enjoy the goings on :)
Mike