February

True to form February has been a little hectic, last minute issues resulting from the February 1st licence period has resulted in quite a few e-mails back and forth, a few visits, but for the most part all is now resolved and off we go again.

There are very few birds in an Urban Environment with Schedule 1 status other than Black Redstart that have to be managed, of late I have been dealing with both on the same construction site. With Black Redstarts it is no doubt easier, they do have a certain tolerance of people, and as such exclusion zones when nesting can be relatively small dependant on the area involved. Obviously they are a smaller bird with different characteristics and behaviour.

With Peregrines, as I have said in the past it is a whole different ball game, they do not tolerate people close by, licensing laws have to cover whole roofs, there is no definition as to what distance constitutes disturbance.

A misconception which I do have to explain regularly is that the licence is not only for the incubating bird, beit Falcon or Tiercel but also affects the bird on ‘guard duty ‘on the building. If this say, is the Tiercel sitting above the nest site on a very large roof, he flushes in reaction to someone going onto the roof, they could be 50 metres away, this is disturbance. If he reacts with stress and calling it is likely to bring the incubating bird off the nest also, the roof could be absolutely massive; the licence still applies which is why whole roofs have to be closed off.

Added to this with successful breeding you will then have juveniles all over a roof, the licence and wherever they go on the roof still applies to dependant young, they cannot be approached or disturbed.

Flooded out Pair

As it stands since the ledge was cleared they have not come back, I had rather hoped that they would but it is looking like they will try on another building this year.

I have located them, presumably it is them, about a mile away on a building I know they have used in the past, I will contact the owners shortly. I must have checked the camera 40 times since it was cleared but unfortunately not a sausage.

Parliament Pair

These have now gone over to their nest site a mile or 2 away, I had hoped to keep them near Parliament but there were one or 2 issues involved with the building concerned in placing a nestbox.I am still hoping that these can be ironed out and resolved as I have visited the roof of this particular building, it is perfect for breeding peregrines.

As you may be aware there nest site which they are on now, and hopefully will breed on successfully this year, is coming under the demolition hammer in the Autumn so a new nest site needs to be found for them.

Juvenile Casualty

Back in October I did a post on a juvenile peregrines under the above heading, below are the post mortem results from the PBMS, as you can see, it was as suspected collision. At the time it did occur to me that there was the possibility of fail play but glad to say it had nothing to do with it.

A sad sight but death was ' natural'

Result from PBMS

A big thanks go to the PBMS.

A scanned shot of the new camera with Falcon present