This leaflet opens as a PDF and gives detailed information on the peregrines that live in the Avon Gorge, Bristol. This was produced by myself and Mandy Leivers, Avon Gorge and Down Wildlife Project. In 2011, the Avon Gorge peregrines reared 5 chicks! This is a large and unusual number for peregrines. However, this pair also had 5 chicks in 2008 and 2010.
Since 1998 I have been studying what urban-dwelling peregrines eat. In 2010, over 8,500 individual animals had been identified as food - mostly from Derby, Exeter, Bristol and Bath. These were from 120 bird and 3 mammal species.
Many of these species migrate under the cover of darkness and indicate peregrines are hunting them at night. These include water rails, moorhens, corncrakes, spotted crakes, woodcock, jack snipe, little grebes, black-necked grebes, quail and turtle doves.
Direct observations from other sites, for example Derby, confirm that peregrines are using the the light from street lamps to see and catch these birds as they migrate over urban areas during the night.
My research can be found in more detail in these references:
Drewitt, E and Dixon, N. 2008. Diet and prey selection of urban-dwelling Peregrine Falcons Falco peregrinus in Southern England. British Birds. 101:58-67
Drewitt, E. 2008. Meet the 24-hour falcon. BBC Wildlife. 26(4):36-41
In 2007 myself and Adrian George set up a colour-ringing peregrine project with the aim to discover more about the movements and survival of peregrines living in the Bristol and Somerset region.
Since then, 50 peregrines have been colour-ringed. Peregrine chicks are ringed at around 3 weeks old and given both a uniquely numbered metal ring issued by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and a light blue plastic ring with two black letters. The colour rings can be read from a distance without the birds having to be recaptured.
The colour rings have already given us fascinating insights into the lives of the peregrines. For example, a male peregrine chick ringed at a church in Bath in 2007 has stayed and is now the breeding male!
In 2008, we were concerned a female ringed at the church in Bath had died. She had disappeared not long after leaving the nest. However, thanks to her colour-ring she was photographed later that autumn alive and well back at the church.
As the colour-ringing project continues we hope that further sightings will enable us to find out more about where peregrines go when they leave their nests, in particular where they nest and who they breed with.
If you spot any ringed or colour-ringed birds, please send in details of the bird and its rings to www.ring.ac.
After an absence of a few months, the juvenile peregrine colour-ringed AD appeared in late autumn back at the church where in hatched in Bath.