Blogs

Peregrines have chosen to nest on the north face of Cardiff City Hall’s clock tower, and with the female spending lots of time on the nest, we are hopeful that she is incubating eggs.

The clock tower nest has already been at the centre of a dramatic bird soap opera this spring. The nest was previously occupied by a pair of ravens but, when the ravens finished nesting in 2006, the peregrines moved in and have never left, using the nest as a winter roost and now as a breeding spot. 

It has been a tense wait to see whether the ravens would come back to claim their home but sightings of the ravens carrying nesting material towards the main building of Cardiff University in February suggest that they found an alternative nest site.

To find out more about how to watch the birds in their high-rise, city centre nest, visit our peregrines on the Clock Tower page.

Get close-up views of black guillemots at Holyhead Harbour, at this most southerly of breeding locations for these birds. 

With only an estimated fifteen pairs breeding in Wales, this is a special and rare chance to watch black guillemots spend the summer raising their chicks on a diet of fish and small crabs caught from the harbour, before heading back out to sea for the winter.

Peregrines have nested on the cliff face at Dare Valley Country Park for five years running and have made it their home once again for the 2007 breeding season.

Take a beautiful scenic walk to the viewing platform where RSPB Cymru staff and volunteers are on hand with binoculars and telescopes to show you the birds as they sit on the nest or swoop and soar overhead.

For more information about this project, visit our peregrine watch at Dare Valley Country Park page.

A pair of rare white-tailed eagles that have featured heavily on the BBC’s Springwatch programmes have lost both of their young chicks in a freak accident, and the nesting effort by the birds has now failed for this year.

Staff at the Mull Eagle project discovered both of the one-day old eaglets under the nest after becoming concerned due to uncharacteristic behaviour from the adult birds. It looks like the nest may have slipped overnight and both chicks tumbled out to their deaths.

Despite the sad news, it is the first time since 1999 that the nesting attempt of this pair has failed, and they have produced 12 chicks in that time, helping to boost the population elsewhere in Scotland and expand the range of this magnificent species.

What everyone wants to know is whether the female osprey spotted on the nest at Bassenthwaite Lake, was Fish King’s long standing partner (XS) or a new bird.

Well, the Lake District Osprey Project today confirmed that it is a new female.

It remains to be seen whether XS will return to the nest in the coming days or whether romance will now blossom between Fish King and the new female. However, he does have competition - another osprey, probably a male, has been seen in the area over the last two days and he also put in an appearance on the nest yesterday.

For anyone who wants to catch up on the story so far, a fascinating new book about the ospreys has just gone on sale.

The Lakeland Ospreys has been written by local author David Ramshaw and costs £5, and The Lake District Osprey Project will receive £2 from any books sold at the Forestry Commission’s Whinlatter Visitor Centre.

Peregrines have nesting 450 feet up on the jagged ledges of the limestone ‘Pinnacles’ of the Somerset tourist attraction Cheddar Caves & Gorge.

Having bred at the site since around 1991, last year they nested on Priest Rock in the Gorge and had two chicks.

For more information on how you can get close to these fantastic birds, visit our Cheddar Gorge peregrines page.

The male osprey is back at Bassenthwaite Lake, and today it was confirmed as the same male bird from previous years.

The return of the male raises hopes for a seventh successful nesting season for the popular fish-eating birds of prey.

The male osprey (and the partners in Lake District Osprey Project) now face an anxious wait, as they watch the skies for a sighting of the arrival of a female osprey.