Peregrine Today

A female Peregrine flies to one of her stash point with the carcass of a pigeon that she has just consumed

As she drops into her stash she catches the eye of her mate who flies in to check her out.

He brought her the prey best part of an hour ago and has since been waiting for a chance to mate

She calls him in and they mate immediately at the stash point.

Its all over in a few noisy seconds and the male flies away happy.

                           

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                The female returns to her more favoured perch point to settle down while she digests her meal  and contemplates  laying a few eggs                             

Mating Peregrine

A male Peregrine answers a females call to mate and takes off immediately to fly to her perch point about one hundred metres further along the south coast cliffs.

When he arrives she has already adopted a submissive mating position and the male flies straight onto her back taking care to tuck back his sharp talons.

The mating lasts between 10 to 20 seconds and finishes with a graceful flying dismount.

Light levels were poor at the time but I ended up with around seventy images of this premium Peregrine behaviour in the can and was pleased with the sequence of images posted here.

Juvenille Peregrine

I spent several hours this morning looking for a pair of south coast Peregrine but could not find either bird at any of their normal locations which was very unusual,

Perhaps even more unusual was the re-appearance of their last years fledgling which had not been seen in the area for many months

This young bird looked fit and well fed and it appeared to be looking for the adult birds as well and not finding them in their normal locations it flew off again.

Two hours later it returned but this time it was plainly obvious by its extended crop that it had consumed a good sized kill.

Had this young bird taken its own kill or had it found and been supplied food by the missing pair of adult birds at an unknown location,

I shall be back again within the next few days looking for these missing birds that should by now be actively mating and preparing their nest area for a new brood.

As for this young bird's return  The adult birds will not want it hanging around as they start this years new brood and will probably  have to  ' See it off  '  once again

Lost in the dark Shadows

It was a lovely still morning as I walked along the South coast of Cornwall today  The sun rose up into a cloudless blue sky and warmed up very quickly following a cold start.

I caught up with a pair of Peregrine sat high on south coast cliffs and both birds were already showing signs of overheating as they perched with their wings held away from their body to improve on airflow to cool them down.

I took my coat and jumper off as I sat and watched their behaviour and was personally pleased to be feeling the heat of the morning sunshine.

The female Peregrine was still looking uncomfortable and restless with lots of wing movement and body feather shake-outs going on as she tried to cool down

I could see her looking off along the cliffs to the west near to where I had settled.

This particular recessed area of cliff where one face almost backs towards the north east and never receives any direct sunlight during the summer or winter and the dark rock always stay cool.

Within a few minutes our female Peregrine was in the air and she glided directly into this regularly used cooling station where if you hadn't seen her fly in you would never know she was there :

                                                                   Lost in the dark Shadows !

I reckoned she might be there for some time so leaving my coat and jumper stashed to pick up on the way back I walked on towards the west very much enjoying this Cornish autumn morning

Confident Grey Heron

Back on the 14th July in a blog relating to Peregrine prey hand-overs I showed the above image of a somewhat reckless juvenile Peregrine swooping down on a passing Grey heron which screeched and changed direction.

Far from being fazed by the experience the Heron dropped down onto the very rocks that the local south coast family of Peregrine regularly use as a look out point to hunt their prey.

Following an initial look around the bird went into a long slow process where it appeared to be resetting its powerful beak which I have often seen after a heron has made a strike but missed its victim which on this occasion might have been the cheeky young Peregrine had it not backed off.

The bird was then quite relaxed and started to preen its feathers and accepted me gradually moving ever closer on an open clifftop which afforded me no cover,  I then took a few preening shots before backing off and leaving this very confident bird to carry on with its preening

Peregrine Mating Sequence

 

They say that patience are a virtue and fortunately both Peter Tonkin and I are blessed with plenty,  We Sat on coastal cliffs for four hours this morning as can be the norm when we are watching a female Peregrine that was going nowhere and not a picture taken,

She was waiting in turn for her mate to return with prey offerings or to mate with her if he had already supplied prey before we arrived,

Time was ticking by and there was just fifteen minutes left until we both had to be off doing other things when the male arrived out of nowhere but without prey to land on a ledge close to the female, 

Seeing no prey she adopted a head down, tail up mating posture and shrieked at the male continuously for the best part of ten minutes before he took flight to loop around to mate with her and to produce for us this last minute Mating sequence posted above and below,

                                                                  Time well spent !!

Buzzard fly-bye

A fine pair of Buzzards have taken up residence in an old traditional nest site on the south coast and this morning one of them used the thermal updraft from the cliffs above me to demonstrate an effortless circular soaring flight before disappearing off along the coast to hunt,

Two Peregrine in flight with prey

Today's weather was a bit blustery from the southwest and overcast with Cornish mizzle rolling in on a regular basis but I figured that I might just about manage to get out of the wind at the Peregrine location that I visited a few days ago,  It seemed OK weather wise at first but lacking in Peregrine and then after a while I suddenly heard before seeing a Peregrine being hassled for its prey in flight by what looked like it might be last years offspring which should be self sufficient and within its own territory long before now,

The Peregrine with prey opted to land on a ledge very close to the one used on Friday so I figure that it was the same bird and but for the second birds presence would have stashed it away  The prey had already been well dismembered with just the chest carcass and wings intact and apart from picking a few bits off of its ribs this adult bird didn't show much interest and must have already eaten its fill.

As the weather deteriorated the first bird flew off quite quickly leaving the prey on the open ledge and the second bird perched about ten metres away moved straight in attacking the ribcage immediately while I struggled to achieve some sort of reasonable exposure in the deteriorating gloomy conditions

The second bird soon had the ribcage detached from the redundant wings which it abandoned to fly off out of sight with its grizzly prise and it seemed to me that perhaps one or both of this adult pair of Peregrine might still be feeding their off-spring from last year so close to the time they are about to go through their breeding cycle all over again,

I was getting wet and had struggled to keep my kit dry for long enough so I headed for home early   but still pleased to have seen this surprising Peregrine behaviour !!