Parliament - Friday and Saturday

Friday

As with the best laid plans, unfortunately the Peregrines again never read the script, perfect weather dawned on the Friday for filming but a bit of a no show from the peregrines.

The idea was to try and get some hunting footage, birds bringing in prey, food passes if possible from adults to juveniles, of the juveniles, there was only the female present, the 2 remaining males were back at the nest site.

Juvenile female, I suspect the one from Parliament, at an adjacent site being given the treatment by the resident Tiercel

Juve female over Victoria Tower (click on photos to enlarge)

Juvenile on Big Ben

Both adults were roosting on Victoria Tower at dawn, both flew up river immediately, no doubt to check up on and feed the 2 males.

The 2 males are sticking together and are seemingly tied to the natal site far more than there sister, this is despite having been over to Parliament on more than one occasion. Last year all stayed over and were more or less present on every visit.

Males tend to like there own space as they tend to get dominated by there sisters in the food stakes, even at an early age, this may well be one reason that they are not making the jump to parliament and are sticking together. There could well be other reasons, the nest site is there home, why move when they are secure there?

They can sometimes be very hard to spot, especially when there are stone Falcons up there already

Adult Tiercel

Spot the Peregrine

Adult

It could be with there sister at Parliament most of the time, they may realize that they are more likely to be first when it comes to prey where they are, without there sister present. Easy to read human emotions into it, the simple reason could be that they just like the nestsite area more.

During the course of the morning, around 4 hours from dawn, only the juvenile female was present after the adults left, and her presence was only every now and then.



Saturday

Just after dawn the 1st thing we heard was the calling of a juvenile from Victoria Tower, I was with Bertie Gregory, a young wildlife photographer who had arranged to photograph the birds from Parliament, again the 2 juvenile males stayed over at the natal site.

The 1st act of the adult Tiercel was to drive off an adult Lesser Black Backed Gull, as a rule, the adults usually ignore them at Parliament, with the juvenile present, different story.

Juvenile female

Same bird

Right from the start the weather started to turn foul, we did manage to get some shots of the juvenile and an adult but the light was very poor and not ideal.

Eventually the 2 male juveniles will come over, and I would expect them to stay, when, who knows? The only thing that may bring them over sooner is the adults, they are roosting on Victoria Tower, they may well hold to the Tower and hunt from it,the males will have to come over to be fed, hunger is a great motivator.