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Sunday 21 July 2013

Weekend - Parliament pair and released juvenile no 3





It’s been a while since I visited Parliament so I decided on Saturday to see if they were present and back on Parliament, the idea being to try and get some decent photos of the Falcon. From recent posts you will know that they failed this year, the suspicion due to a position change of the nest scrape is that we may have a new female. Furthermore after failing I would have expected them to return to Parliament, with juveniles they usually abandon the nest site building and head back to Parliament around July 10th onwards.

Arriving around 4.45am, the Park was not open yet, I started to search favoured spots for roosting birds, and additionally I also walked round to the Abbey. After an hour of searching in vain I was pretty sure they were not present so I headed off to the nest site building not expecting to find them which was the case when I last visited.
A ¼ of a mile away sitting at traffic lights I spotted one bird in profile sitting at the peak of the building, good news at least one or more were present. On arrival I found both birds, unfortunately as mentioned in the past it’s not the sort of area where you can get Photographic Equipment /Telescope out on the Street so photos of the supposed new female will have to wait until Parliament. Another possible reason that they are staying is that it could be a better area for hunting.

At least they were present, just a pity about them failing this year, quite a few people look forward to seeing the ‘noisy’ juveniles when they return to Parliament. I will hopefully be able to check them again next week, if they defect.

In a follow up visit after visiting the 2 released juveniles last week I headed for the 3rd female juvenile which was released on the same day as the other 2.She is ok but she appears to have lost one of her brothers, I watched for 2 hours with the adult Falcon present and only the 2 juveniles were on show.
This site is the Scaffold Nest box pairing, during the 2 hours, the adult Tiercel also came in with prey which was claimed by the female before her brother could take it, I would have expected the 3rd juvenile to also try and make a claim for it.


Released female on left having just fed inside nest box, brother looking on




I do hope I am wrong and it could well be the case that he has already claimed prey before I arrived, in this case he could be feeding on his own or laying up after feeding. As they say, time will tell and I will try and get out during the week for another look to confirm, as yet going their own way and independence are a long way off.
This site will very likely have 2 webcams installed later in the year, HD hopefully, plans are afoot so fingers crossed that all goes well.

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