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.
I can only say that the last couple of weeks have been pretty stressful, especially the week after the chick fell which was stupidly hot and all the birds were struggling and stressed in the heat.
How our chick managed to survive falling 11 floors !!! is beyond me, but survive it has, and although still small and not looking incredibly strong, it's doing great. I watched earlier today as it ate the best part of a whole Woodpigeon !
We cancelled putting rings/ colour rings on the chicks as they were so stressed in the hot weather, we (of course) thought about nothing but their welfare, so they're unringed this year.
Fledging Time - It appears that the first chick has fledged as I didn't see it yesterday, and not so far today - staff in the building are on high alert for it if it crash lands.
Our remaining chick will often 'flake-out' on the platform, usually in heat or after a big meal - don't we all :) So please don't worry, it is fine, they all do this, it's just that the eyes of the world are watching our little miracle.
The amount of discarded remains of prey around the platform is now staggering, they hardly clean up do they !
If our little miracle fledges successfully, it'll be nothing short of a BIG miracle :):)
The 3 chicks at StadiumMK have successfully fledged, even though one decided to try and gate crash a big concert.
Likewise the chicks on the Church in Marlow have also fledged.
Fingers crossed for our chick that remains.
Enjoy (if that's the right word)!
Mike
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