A Very Lucky Peregrine

Quite an eventful weekend covering several Peregrine Sites, I also witnessed some remarkable behaviour from a female juvenile.

Whilst watching on Sunday I heard the unmistakable sound of juvenile peregrines, on locating the source of the noise, no less than 3 juv Peregrines greeted me coming across the Thames, one with prey.
What alarmed me was the fact that an obvious female had the prey, she wouldn't give it up from the attention of the other 2, and in doing so, all were getting precariously near the water at times.

The inevitable happened and the female with the prey crashed into the water, my heart sank as I thought that's her lot. All the Gulls etc scattered, and I was thankful that no Great Black Backed Gulls were in the area, one or more would very likely kill her on the water.

However, all was not lost, floating now around 40 metres from rocks, she then started half flapping with her wings towards land, a semi swimming/flying action. As I willed her on, and despite quite obviously tiring with wet wings/body, she unbelievably made it to the Rocks!

Now just slightly just out of view in a position I couldn’t access, I kept an eye on this area, eventually a very wet juvenile emerged and flew out strongly over the river low and then gained height over my head.



I took photos as I always do and can confirm that it was no other than the female ADJ which I fostered on June 18th!

Ringed by Paul after the usual fantastic work by South Essex Wildlife Hospital to give her another chance, she is an incredibly lucky bird.

Absolutely fantastic to see her fully integrated into her new family, obviously not the ditching, hopefully she will learn her lesson from this, an exceptionally lucky Peregrine leading a charmed life it seems.

In June I picked up 2 drowned juveniles.

                                                    Being harassed by other juveniles

                                                                          Ditching

                                                                  A very wet ADJ