Williamson Weekly Nature Notes July 8 2009

Life skills for these four youngsters are a bit more specialised than for most birds though. How can you be sure of catching your dinner when you are travelling at nearly 200 miles per hour; your food is travelling at 60 in another direction and may also be twisting and turning in the most distracting way?

Watching the parents at work over the past ten years shows they have the task to a fine art. First, they feed the eyases with delicate little pieces of meat and feather.

After a few weeks they simply drop the food parcel '“ usually a pigeon or dove '“ into the nest and let the children get on with cutting it up. By the beginning of June when the young start to fly the lessons become more difficult.

Food is now dropped in mid-air, after the young ones have been ordered to pay attention. Often this is preceded by food being almost handed over in flight, but often it is not. The prey may well crash to the ground, or the roof of the cathedral, and there it will have to lie until picked up by an urban fox, cat, or crow.

Meanwhile the young have been practising connecting with moving targets on their own.

This week I saw a youngster looking at a white dove perched tantalisingly on a roof gutter.

He nodded his head up and down in typical bird-of-prey preparation, checking the variables of perspective. Then suddenly down he dropped, but the pigeon was prepared.

It kept 20 yards ahead as they followed the cathedral contours; over the roof, under a flying buttress, around the keep, and around the yew trees. The young falcon soon gave up, and fluttered back to his perch. Within a few minutes the white dove was back on his perch too.

If you want to hear more about peregrines and many other birds, mammals, plants and butterflies come along to my Chichester Festivities talk 7.30pm at the Newell Centre this Thursday, July 9, all in aid of RSPB.