Day 8 of Fledge Watch and the day PF finally flew the roost with an RAF flypast for him......

Yes there is a five day gap between my blog posts Day Two (last Sunday) and Day Eight (today) but I had to work Monday to Friday, whilst Nathalie devoted all of her waking hours to watching the peregrines. You can catch up on the weeks events on the Fulham and Barnes Peregrines Facebook page.

 

Basically in a nutshell PF, the only surviving youngster of Tom and Charlie, was due to fledge last week. Peregrines generally fledge aged around 42 days old. When I left him last Sunday (PF is a male) he was 40 days old. So all of this week I've been expecting to hear that he finally took his first flight. But no, he got himself a bit of a reputation as a lazy boy......not a lot of wing flapping and practice jumping, just a lot of eating, sleeping and pancaking.

 I even joked that perhaps he was waiting for my visit today, and I was VERY nearly right. At 9am this morning I checked to see if he had fledged and he hadn't. Maybe I had predicted correctly - was he waiting for me ???

 

No. I arrived at the back of Charing Cross Hospital just before 11am to be told he had finally taken the leap and flown off the nest ledge at 9.26 this morning !!

And the only witness was a friend I hadn't seen for ages, the lovely Carol Rawlings.

 

Today was a proper mixed bag. I had two massive epic failed photos (as you'll read later), we had great views of the planes flypast after their stint at the Trooping the Colour and we had time to do some critter searching.

 

But to start the day it was 'find the fledgling' for Nathalie and Carol after his un-warned launch off the balcony. As Carol said, one minute he was there, the next he'd gone (there is a vid clip of this on the FaB facebook page - link above). They found him before I arrived. He'd managed to land amongst the tallest set of aerials on the hospital roof.....

 

Can you see him ?

 

 

Can you see him now ?

 

Both Tom and Charlie knew where he was and occasionally flew around the hospital building.

Just after 1pm the RAF planes from the Trooping the Colour gave us our own flypast show, and one of the bigger ones went directly overhead spooking up every bird on the hospital, including Charlie, but not our PF - he stayed settled amongst the aerials.

 

A little while later Charlie decided enough was enough. He had to come out. She watched for a while from another set of aerials and satellite dishes, then took off, flew towards him and around the mast and flew back......

 

This was enough encouragement to get PF moving. He made his way up the mast, eventually perching on one of the satellite dishes.....

 

 

and then took off.....

which leads to epic photo fail number one below......

the only photo I managed to get of PF flying today and the whole picture was out of focus......

 

He flew a short distance in a semi circle, started to head over the hospital, then almost stopped and hovered before dropping down on the flat roof near where one of the 'larders' are.

Photo below is of Charlie checking out that corner after PF landed there....

 

 

Of course on top of the flat roof we couldn't see PF at all, and we could only watch both Charlie and Tom and guess where PF was. Fledge Watch wasn't just truly starting for us, but also for the parents, who both seemed to take it in turns to choose perches that enabled them to keep an eye on him.

 

Charlie below....

 

and Tom on the nest ledge.....

 

Later this afternoon, Tom flew over to the corner of the flat roof and PF immediately stuck his head up to greet him. No doubt then that our lazy boy had been happily sleeping up there.

 

Back to the flypast, although I was sent a link to name each plane correctly I haven't had time to study it yet. But it was a lovely experience which started with three huge Chinooks in the distance, then planes all coming from the same direction but all veering off so that some went past us on the right hand side and some went completely over head....

 

 

which leads to epic failed photo number two....

the Red Arrows.....

completely out of focus though I managed to get the trees in lovely focus.....

 

There were several critters out in the cemetery today.

This one below I thought at first was a hoverfly larvae but turns out it is a Lacewing larvae....

 

 

There were several Seven-spot ladybirds around....

 

lots and lots of these tiny Longhorn beetles, which are probably 'strangalia melanura' according to my ecologist friend Jonesy.....

 

there were also great numbers of the Burnet Companion day flying moth....

 

and a few Meadow Brown butterflies, my first of the year, including this obliging male that gave me great views of both under wing and open wing......

 

I had a chance to do a bit of hoverating this afternoon and came away with two species.

 

This is Syrphus vitripennis - a male - only males have eyes that meet in the middle....

 

 

and the one below is one of our commonest hoverfly, the very pretty Marmalade Fly - Episyrphus balteatus - a female (there is a gap between the eyes)

 

The one below had me stumped until I got home and enlarged the photo. It wasn't a hoverfly, nor a mimic bee. So I had to get better clarification from the Insects facebook page and a very knowledgeable Jaswinder Boparai identified it as a Cephidae - a stem boring sawfly.....

 

 

Apart from my two epic photo failures, it was a great day.

 

To end my blog are three photos of Charlie and one of Tom.

Fledge Watch isn't over now PF has fledged. Tom and Charlie will begin the steady process of helping PF learn to fly strong and hunt prey. My next visit is Sunday 19th June and it will be really interesting to see how far PF has come by then. For daily updates, photos and vid clips please visit the FaB Peregrine facebook page run by the peregrines 'Godmother' and my friend, Nathalie (the link is at the top of this blog post).

 

Without Nathalie we wouldn't be privileged to see these urban Peregrines. Her understanding and constant monitoring of these birds over the past few years, largely on her own, has been shared with thousands of us.

Nathalie - we thank you !

 

Charlie

Charlie

Charlie on the nest ledge, with the aerials above her that she had to perch on to encourage PF to fly today

 

Tom earlier today, on the same corner where PF eventually landed after his second flight of the day