Peregrine Blog No 3 2024

Well that’s the end of another very successful season for the cathedral Peregrines. Four eggs laid, four eggs hatched, four chicks fledged, and, as I type, four chicks honing their hunting skills before becoming fully independent, probably in August.

Luckily there were no mishaps with chicks departing the nest area before they were reasonably competent on the wing. In the past we have had the occasional one crash land on the ground and having to be scooped up in a cardboard box and returned to the nest area. It was only a couple of years ago that one crash landed on one of it’s early flights amongst startled guests in the museum garden café! Grounded birds are not at all uncommon, this year I have seen photos of one in a flower pot on the balcony of a flat, one running along the pavement of a busy street, and one perched on the roof of a car. So far as I am aware, all were rescued and lived to tell the tale. We are fortunate at the cathedral in as much as the nest box is on the walkway on the south side of the cathedral, and it is about a metre or so below the level of the parapet wall directly above it. This means that before they take to the air on their maiden flights from the cathedral , the chicks have had to have been sufficiently strong on the wing to actually fly up onto the parapet wall. Nests with no such hurdle to jump before a maiden flight are much more prone to ‘fallers’ as they are known. Obviously on open cliff ledges, or on electricity pylons where they often nest these days, a premature attempt at flight or being blown off the nest by wind can be disastrous for the chick. They are seldom killed by the fall, but once on the ground the parents often do not feed them, they can easily get lost in wet vegetation and often fall victim to Badgers or Foxes. I have over the years come across a number of predated chicks under pylon nest sites, a very sad end indeed.

On a much brighter note, readers of this blog may have read I the press that a pair of Peregrines have taken up residence on Romsey Abbey, and in 2024 laid eggs for the first time. Unfortunately they ignored the nest box which was put up for them in 2023 and laid two eggs on the stonework of the building. Alas one was washed into a gutter by rain and the other was abandoned. Let us hope for better results in 2025. Interestingly the male of this new pair was ringed as a chick on St Mary’s church in Andover in 2020; it was identified as such by the coloured Darvic ring on its leg. Speaking of ringing, not only were the Salisbury cathedral chicks ringed this year, but a DNA sample was taken from each at the time of ringing, and this information is fed into a national data base which it is hoped will be able to help in the future in identifying individual birds. This ability to identify individual birds and thus their origin may well be useful in cases of possible wildlife crime where there might reason to doubt whether a given bird which for example might be claimed to have been bred in captivity, has in fact be taken from the wild population. Oh yes, finally on the topic of ringing, readers of this blog will I am sure be delighted to hear that Flo, a female chick  (orange Darvic ring TND) which fledged from the cathedral in 2021, has for the second year running raised two chicks on a disused building in Welwyn Garden City.

The highlight of the Peregrine season for many people is to come and see the birds on the cathedral. This year in conjunction with the cathedral, the local Salisbury RSPB group ran their usual ‘Date with Nature’ event from early June until early July. As ever this was a great success with visitors from many corners of the globe, as well as local residents, able to enjoy seeing the birds ‘in the flesh’ so to speak. With two telescopes, as many as four chicks on view, together with local RSPB members on hand to answer questions, given a bit of patience, almost all visitors came away very happy with their experience. On a somewhat personal note, the junior branch of the Wiltshire Ornithological Society (WOS) organised a field trip to view the birds in mid June. A number of young people gathered with their parents and as arranged, I started  to give them a talk about Peregrines in general and our Salisbury birds in particular. I was half way through telling them about how fast the birds were and how they caught their prey, when I was rudely interrupted (well not really) by a cacophony of sound as all four chicks which had been previously unseen, came screaming out from the cathedral to meet an adult bringing in an item of prey. Within literally another two minutes, the second adult brought in a second prey item and there was more jostling amongst the chicks to claim the prize. One chick grabbed it, promptly dropped it, but with great aplomb, recaught it before it hit the ground and carried it into a hidden nook on the cathedral. I could not have arranged things better if I tried, and all of the young folk, and of course their parents, were absolutely delighted at the show the birds had put on for them.

Well that is the end of the season, all that remains is a trip up the tower in late summer to clear up the prey debris and the like from the walkway and the nest box in preparation for 2025. Let us hope that it is as good as 2024!

Granville Pictor 12 July 2024.