Fancy a Woodcock or two for tea?! Peregrines certainly do.

I have been excited by, and interested in Peregrines now for 14 years - and what sparked my interest was looking for what they had been eating. I loved finding various wings, heads and legs of birds below office blocks in the middle of Bristol, and often right outside Pizza Hut! It was an adventure, and I often had to think like a detective to work out what the prey items were from. 

Whilst I have less time to actually do the searching these days, Sam has been regularly visiting the Peregrines in Bristol's city centre, and as a result, he has been finding lots of prey (see previous blog). 

On Thursday evening, Sam was down near the Peregrines' roost site and discovered three Woodcocks on the ground - they had no doubt been blown down by the winds from a Peregrine cache. To ensure they have enough food during cold periods of weather, Peregrines store food. With the recent cold spell, it is likely there was a surge of Woodcocks in the region - escaping colder places further east. Many Woodcocks arrive from the Baltic states and parts of Russia. Sadly, modern buildings are not great for a cache - the dead birds just get blown down like these ones did! In more traditional haunts such as cliffs, they would be hidden in crevices and cracks in the rocks. Its' a remarkable find which not only tells us what the Peregrines are feeding on, but also that Woodcocks are in the area (even though we may never normally see them around). 

The cold weather movements by wading birds are common at this time of the year. As wet, muddy woodlands and meadows become frozen across Europe, birds such as Woodcocks head west, where they can find moist and, in relative terms, milder conditions, to feed on worms and other invertebrates. Cornwall, Devon, and even the Western Isles of Scotland are hotspots for Woodcocks in the winter because they are relatively ice free, meaning plenty of worms to feed on!

Here you can also see three Peregrines together taken by Sam over Bristol, near where the Woodcocks were found - we reckon this is the city centre breeding pair and their youngster (left), haggling over a half eaten pigeon! 

Images by Sam Hobson. 

Peregrines are on the move - watch out for who's who

At this time of the year, Peregrines are on the move. Young birds hatched earlier in the year will be travelling around the UK, sometimes short distances, perhaps only a radius of 50 miles; others will be moving much further, up to 120 miles or more. 

Urban sites with wintering Peregrines may consist of not just local birds, but falcons from further afield. Of course, they look the same, but with some careful observations of age, sex, and other plumage markings, you may be able to tell the individuals apart. A city centre roost may have four or five individual Peregrines using the site, even though only one or two are seen at any one time. 

Many urban Peregrines are now marked with colour rings on their legs under a Schedule 1 Licence - these allow the birds to be identified from a distance. Others, particularly those ringed in quarries, may only sport a unique, BTO metal ring (which the colour-ringed birds will also have). 

Either way, the rings can tell us a lot about individual Peregrines, from where they have travelled from, to how old they are.  When spotting Peregrines, keep an eye or for their legs and any rings. With a good scope or camera, the colour rings can be read. The metal rings require powerful lenses, but if a bird is close enough, they can sometimes be read too. 

Report any rings and their codes to ring.ac and myself! The colour rings I use in the Bristol and Bath region are light blue with black letters.