For the last couple of weeks it's been all go for our peregrines down at the yat. After being a month late with their breeding, the adults almost seem to know that time is not on their side and have started really putting our chick through her paces. Every morsel of food that they bring in for the chick, they make her work harder and harder, often making her chase them around the cliff-faces, playing a game of tick that means ever so much more for her future.
To her credit though, the chicks progress has been fantastic. She's stuck to it and is looking more and more competent every day, even catching up with our male and nearly taking the pigeon that he was carrying out of his talons on the 6th...... she caught our male unaware, perhaps he didn't realise just how well she was improving, but before she could get any purchase on the pigeon our male seemed to step up a gear to really test her...... zippping across the cliffs, twisting and turning with phenomenal speed and agility......... our chick tried to keep up, but he was just that little bit too quick for her.
Part of the reason for that is due to the chicks feathers....... when a chick fledges, all of their wing feathers are 5mm longer than those of the adults. The reason for this is like putting stabilizers on a bike when teaching a child how to ride one, it provides the chick with an extra bit of stability and control in the air, a slightly bigger surface area of the wing so that it can catch the thermals easier and also slows her down just a little so that she can't lose control. After their first year flying with their ''L'' feathers, they moult and the feathers are replaced with the more streamlined adult feathers. It always amazes me how nature comes up with these little adaptions and just how perfect they are for their job...... nature certainly is the best engineer!!
After the male had put in his awesome display, the chick had obviously been inspired to improve further and she certainly has been putting the work in. She's improved so much that a couple of days ago, as the female came in with a freshly killed pigeon, she flew underneath, grabbed the pigeon and proceeded to fly upside-down for 20 yards unwilling to let go. Eventually she managed to prise it from the grasp of her (no doubt proud and very impressed) mum, took it to the ash tree in front of the cliff-face and started to gorge herself..... unfortunately, she's not quite used to sitting in trees to eat her meals and as she shifted position, she let go of the pigeon and let it fall to the floor. She sat for a little while looking a bit embarassed and annoyed at losing her lunch then took to the air looking to make amends. She almost did with a spectacular stoop on a pigeon right in front of us....... she came down like a bolt from the blue, came underneath the pigeon and managed to get everything in the right place in time to grab it. We think it was her first real encounter with live prey as, unfortunately, she didn't look quite sure of what to do with this flapping bird in her talons and so she let it go......... lucky pigeon!!
Yesterday however, she had learnt her lesson and made probably the most important step of her young life......... she made her first kill! After just one month in the air too! I wasn't there to witness it, but i hear that it was a perfect stoop that completely caught the pigeon unaware...... exactly what a peregrine needs to do as pigeons can be tricky, especially when they know there's a peregrine on their tail...... they are slightly more agile than a peregrine due to their smaller size and can twist and turn down to the trees extremely quickly when needed. It's a great sign for the chick, we were a little worried that she may not learn in time or have enough young birds to have a go at as she's a bit late, but this was the sign we were hoping for and we can all breathe a bit easier now and hope that she continues her hard work and progress.
Thanks to Phil Andrews, one of our Symonds Yat volunteers, for the cracking image below........... here for you all to see is our chick....... looking good isn't she!!!!
As always, any further developments with our peregrines will be put up on here....... but if you'd like to see them with your own eyes, pop on down and be inspired with a Date with Nature!!
Chris.
This past week the young female has continued to improve on her flying skills, becoming ever more bold and attemping some 'grown up stuff'.
The return of the sun in valley was met with both parents rising up on thermals to hunt. On two occasions the adults were hunting close enough to the rock for the young one to tag along for a look. The male split a flock of birds just above the river, twisting and turning trying to catch one in level flight. The aerial manouvers occur so quickly it is very hard to actually see what is happening, but everthing else seems to slow down and go a bit quiet. I think it is due to how a moment like that gathers all of your attention. I am unsure whether the male made a kill but the young one followed him doggedly, screaming as he continued to zip around.
On another occasion, the young one followed the female as she made a short stoop and took a wood pigeon. She and the mother then moved to one of the larder sites and proceeded to gorge themselves. In fact, the young one ate so much, its crop looked fit to burst and then all of a sudden she just fell over and led there. She stayed like this for ages. For almost an hour she didn't move, we thought she may have suffered a greedy death. Then, she twitched and came back to us. Our residential volunteers, Jane and Hugh almost had heart attacks, thinking the little one had died on their watch!
Finally yesterday, the juvenile was mobbed by carrion crows above the nest site, which notably, have not mobbed the adults all season long. Perhaps they can recognise the adults and think it best to leave them alone? The young one however was just toying with the crows, indulging in the flight practise these bombardments provided. She has been flying for 15 days and she already makes the crows look like they are flapping around frantically in comparison, like someone who can't swim thrashing around in water. These falcons make other birds look out of their element, which of course they are not, the falcons just exploit it better.
Gary
Our young bird fledged on Saturday. She clambered around the rock face for as long as she could, putting off the inevitable, carefully edging along the ledges, roving far from the nest hole and raiding the parents food caches. These missions meant she had food and of course, no need to fly and take the plunge. The parents brought food in and paraded it by flying in front of her, presumably to illicit a flight but she wasn'y interested. Eventually though, the supplies she acquired from wanderings, dwindled and for whatever reason (as we can surely never know for certain) she flew. Her first flights were short, nervous forays into the air, followed by clumsy 'landings' on or rather into the cliff-face, with her frantically grapling to hold on where she and rock face collided.
Then, the weather turned for the worse and the rock face and valley became saturated within low cloud. This was not good weather for hunting by the adults or flight practise by the juvenile, so there was little acitvity really. The birds have adopted a new perch, in a secluded gully. This is due to there being a flat pinnacle of rock within this gully that the young bird can land on. When the adults have made a kill, they bring it back to the nest site and flight acrobatically, as the juvenile chases trying to keep up, screeching the whole time demanding food. This kind-of game of touch, is really good at developing the the flight skills of the juvenile. She is already tearing food herself and in one incident sat on a branch with her mother eating a kill. She then retired to a perch above her mother but the food must have gone straight to her head as she promptly, lost balance and fell off backwards, bounced off her mother (whilst up-side-down) into the bushes below.
She must have improved though, as today she took the longest flight I have seen, flying gently right over to where we stand, circling and trying to catch falling seedpods in her talons.
So, we have one chick and I am content with that. A few weeks back I had resigned myself to thinking that due to the late start to the breeding season for this pair, their apparent young age and distinct lack of obvious chick feeding, the eggs had not hatched. This was offset with the hope that the adults had been feeding the young when we were not there, in the early morning, as some of the literature suggests. Some researchers have found that at the break of day a falcon will visit water to wash and drink, then practice a few stoops and then make a kill....and that is it for the working day. So, when I saw the adults bring in a kill and not take it to the nest hole, I assumed that was it, no chicks. But then, an hour later, a fluffy grey mass started flapping its stumpy wings at the nest entrance. Since that first viewing the chick has rapidly changed into big juvenile. Peregrine chicks will triple in size over the first 7 days and then another ten times over the next three weeks, so the change is rapid and dramatic. Therefore, despite the first sighting of the chick a few weeks ago, it is now pretty much indistinguishable from the adults.I was away for just over a week working at glastonbury festival (yes, the RSPB goes to Glastonbury and we met loads of really nice people and gained lots of support!) and it had changed loads during that time. 'It' is most probably a 'she'. We can tell this because she is already bigger than her dad and females are a third larger than males. All of the fluffy down is gone now and the young lady sits at the entrance of the nest hole all day, spending her youth either flapping her wings to increase her strength or lying down flat, with wings spread.....maybe in an attempt to cool down.
I am not sure what the actual impetus that will drive her to jump of the rock face and attempt her first flight will be? I don't know if the parents stop feeding her for a bit and this drives her off, or if some strange instinct or curiosity becomes overwhelming.....whatever though, hats of for having a go. This fledging incident should happen in the coming days and then it should get extra special as the adults will begin to train the young one to hunt and undertake the death defying, high speed aerial maneuvers these birds are famous for. The adults will bring in injured birds for her to chase, drive flocks into the valley for target practice and drop items such as sticks for the chick to try and catch mid air. Which will be nice.
Other than that this week a buzzard caught a slow worm, the voles fought the bigger wood mice for seed in some kind of rodent war and a cheeky squirrel shirked the seed war and climbed down the rock face and raided one the peregrines larders and then climbed back up the cliffs, like a tiny rock climbing juggler.
Finally.... after much deliberation, worrying and many guesses of do they.... don't they.... the moment we had all been waiting for has happened! We have confirmation that the new Symonds Yat peregrines have successfully hatched chicks...... however...... (it's never that easy is it!).... we're not sure how many we have..... up to now, we've seen just one chick at the entrance to the nest site, but hey...... better to have one than none!
So, we are waiting to see if any more chicks come to the edge, but with the amount of food that is going in and by the look of the feathers and down, we think that one is all we have. The chick is now around 28 days old judging by the plumage, it's still quite downy, but the wing feathers are coming through nicely giving it a two-toned effect, and it's obviously a punk as it still has a mohican of down on top! Every so often he comes to the edge of the nest, looking down and you can almost hear him thinking.... "Jump down there?? You have got to be kidding!!"..... He/She can relax for now, as it won't be making that leap of faith for at least another week yet, so it's been spending most of it's time sitting out enjoying the scenery and rivalling the Tate Modern chicks with his white Andy Warhol-esque decoration of the nest entrance as he turns around and relieves him/herself!
Apologies must be given to you all for the lateness of the blog..... we just wanted to make absolutely certain that all had gone well before we let everyone know. Thankfully it has and all that is left to do is to wait for that final leap, and then we can truly say that our peregrines have been successful..... it's looking good so far!
Chris