With the three furry blobs rapidly turning into scraggly teenage peregrines they’re quickly learning what’s safe and what’s not safe. What’s safe for them is mum or dad arriving with new carrion. What’s not safe for them is a mysterious white rubber gloved hand protruding into their nest to clean pooey windows. The cacophony of alarm calls is enough to be alert to but today an attempt was made to clean our camera windows and was beaten off after it was noticed one of the chicks was balanced out on the wrong side of the ledge, and indeed nearly lost balance. The roost was closed but the chicks, in their attentive state, weren’t going to leave the ledge side of the box so our vision remains “clouded” for now and a new strategy will be employed shortly. Instead photos from the ledge camera show our peregrine juniors to be developing fast and with any luck they’ll be ready to attempt test flights inside of 10 days (being approx 31 days old now).
Note: furry objects on the ledge appear much smaller than they really are – at more than 300mm m(12″) they’re occupying most of the spare space in the nest now, and when either parent comes to visit they’re confined to the microwave transmission dish mounting around the corner (when the sun doesn’t make it too hot to perch on).
New videos – this is what we’re up against now when we venture in to do some housework; footage from the new camera showing daily life in the roost, and more close-in video of the (at that time) 26 day old chicks.