Battersea Power Station - March

 

I visited last Saturday morning 16th after checking Sunday's forecast which was very poor, Saturday proved better, not the bright sunshine forecast but a good morning, nonetheless.

Peregrines - no eggs as of yet, this is if they are coming given her age, she spends a lot of time in the nest box however, resting and creating/renewing the egg scrape and going through the normal process and routine.

Given that the new nest position in the Northeast Wash Tower has been such an outstanding success from everyone's hard work, it's such a pity, that she may not be able to grace it with eggs/chicks due to her age.

Both on show on Saturday, the Falcon in and out of the nest box, duffing up a Crow over the Thames also, but mostly just resting up in various positions/locations.
The Tiercel however was more active, I am fairly sure he hit a pigeon and failed to hold it, it was on the Roof Gardens of the Flats on Switch House East. He repeatedly circled this position for around 3 or 4 minutes, obviously not comfortable coming down to grab it.

I have seen them do this a number of times, failing to grab the prey on impact and it drops, this looked exactly the same, they are loath to give it up as you would expect.

                                                  Nest Box totally accepted - will she lay?

                                                                              Falcon

                                                                        Tiercel

In regard to the Roof Gardens, we have a Magpie building a nest aloft in one of the Birches, not good news for all the small birds on the Estate, they will take a lot of eggs/chicks unfortunately. It is nature however and you have to go with it, the Magpies themselves, could also be targeted by the Peregrines, especially young freshly fledged Magpies.

The Feeders continue to attract large numbers of Goldfinch, especially feeding on the Sunflower Hearts.
Numbers continue to soar with 25+ seen at the Power Station, they are still sorting themselves into pairs, and it could be that we will again have double figure nests as per last year.

In terms of breeding, the Wagtails are paired and already nest building, the Power Station Estate has always been a regular established breeding site over my 24 years, for both Pied and Grey Wagtails.
It looks like we have 2-3 pairs of Grey Wagtails and 2 pairs of Pied, paired up, all are nest building already.

                                                                     Goldfinches

                                                      Grey Wagtails - already building

                                                                 Magpie building

The Black Redstart was again seen briefly in his favourite Garden, notoriously hard to get into a nest box, I have targeted them with several discreetly placed open fronted nest boxes, dotted around the rooftop gardens, well hidden in structures.

2 of the Aurora gardens nest boxes are in use, (Great and Blue Tit) but I didn't see the Blackbirds which bred last year in the gardens, hopefully I am just missing them.

Amusing sight of the morning, will definately go to 2 Pied Wagtails living up to their raptor harassing reputation, mobbing the Tiercel whilst he tried to recover his prey!