Thursday 2 June 2016

#30DaysWild day 2: Aylesbury peregrine watch

For day 2 of #30DaysWild we took a trip into Aylesbury to see the peregrine falcons that are nesting on the council buildings in the centre of town. BBOWT and the Bucks Bird Club were all set up in the market square. Their scopes were trained on the nesting platform and they were on hand to tell us where to look and what we were looking at.


The peregrines are nesting on a specially installed platform near the top of the tall grey building.

There are two chicks that should fledge in about two weeks time. At one point they peeped over the edge of the ledge and we could clearly see their white fluffy heads.

They usually nest on steep cliffs, but have moved into several towns and cities where they nest on tall buildings and have an abundant supply of pigeons and other birds. There's usually only a single pair in Aylesbury, although a couple of weeks ago the nest was attacked by another male. The two males were in a fight to the death, but the security guard at the office block saw them and pulled them apart. The resident male was fine and quickly released again, but the intruder is still being cared for at Tiggywinkles wildlife hospital and was severely injured.


The mum was sat on top of the building above the nest for a while, then flew around overhead. They're the fastest animals on earth, recorded at 200 miles per hour in a controlled dive (known as a stoop).


The kids were fascinated by the chicks and absolutely loved looking through the scopes. It was very kind of everyone to let the public (especially sticky fingered children) loose on their expensive scopes!


 
The little one was particularly impressed by all the scopes and binoculars! Little boys and their big toys!!
 
 


Several people had the live nest cams on tablets for us to look at, which you can watch here. One of the ladies had helped to ring the chicks the week before and had photos of them on her phone. She'd also written a blog post about it for the BBOWT blog, including more photos, which you can read here.


What an inspiring experience for the children ... Thanks BBOWT and Bucks Bird Club!

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