The Lincolnshire Bird Club

For an updated list of prey recovered from St Wulfram's church, please follow this link - http://www.lincsbirdclub.co.uk/Articles ... oject.html

Andrew

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Andrew Chick
Website: http://www.forktail.co.uk/

A fascinating prey list and interesting to note that 3 of the species Quail, Knot and Ringed Plover have not been recorded in SK93 in either winter or summer by the BTO Atlas.

The difficulty is I presume we don't know how far from the nest site these birds hunt? so its not possible to assign prey items found like this to a particular square, pity!

It is thought that the Peregrines could easily hunt as far a field as the Wash, from Grantham is would take the birds about half and hour to get there?

Andrew

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Andrew Chick
Website: http://www.forktail.co.uk/

Interesting to note the number of Woodcock taken in Spring 2009 and Spring 2010. If these are roding birds then it could be having quite a significant impact on a scarce breeding bird in South Lincs.

Hugh Dorrington

the survay on prey taken at derby irongate was similar to the grantham birds and i would go with there findings that they were taking migrating birds hunting at night. 50 miles is a long way for the smaller lighter teircel to carry prey several times a day ???
terry whalin

Another interesting point. 103 Feral Pigeons and only 1 Wood Pigeon. Given the latter is the commonest bird on most ttvs you'd think Peregrines would be taking more of them.

Any one know why they don't seem to be filling their boots?

Thought's.

Size, Feral/Wood!

Habitat, easier prey. closer to nest site.

Health. How many do we see that appear to be on the downward spiral!

etc, etc after a couple of beer's.

Can the establishment offer any thought's!!!

Brian.

Ps. I would love to know, what attracts them to around RAF Waddington all year round ,but especially in winter in such large numbers(10k+ is not uncommon).

Woodpigeons are generally too big for Peregrines to carry. Woodcock, Teal and Feral Pigeons weigh up to about 400 grams, whereas Woodpigeons weigh 600 grams.........nearly the same weight as a male Peregrine!

Alan

Wow, great data set. Looking at the species composition there is nothing there that the birds could not have caught in the immediate vicinity of the church - with the exception of non-migratory and peri-urban species such as Red-legged Partridge, Green Woodpecker and Jay which they would have had to move at least a 1 km or so. Most (all?) of the waders may have been caught at night (although I've seen Pegs hunting GPs at Marston regularly), the Quail, Little Grebes, Moorhen etc certainly were and potentially many of the thrushes too.

However as Andy indicates, radio-telemetry studies indicate that some Peregrine foraging trips may be extensive, for instance Enderson & Craig (1997) studying two nests in Colorado found that:

About 60% of the locations were less than 8 km from nest sites, but about 20% of locations for females exceeded 23 km. Searches from aircraft verified that several hunting flights were as far as 20-43 km from nest sites and were much greater than previously reported. One female flew at least 79 km on one flight and, during another flight, the same bird flew over 19 km in 10 min, averaging 115 km/hr.

http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/jrr/v031n0 ... p00338.pdf

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Dr Alexander C. Lees
Lecturer in tropical ecology
Manchester Metropolitan University

Lab Associate
Cornell Lab of Ornithology,
Cornell University

http://www.freewebs.com/alexlees/index.htm
@Alexander_Lees

I watched a male Peregrine carrying a large prey item, with large webbed feet? could not work out what it was but the PE was really struggling with it -- it moved all the way from Hull to within 300m of the Humber Bridge, where a juv was waiting but then seemed to just give up and dropped the prey in the outskirts of Hessle! the juv gave chase but the prey was just left -- a big juv female at Alkborough of late keeps dropping onto Curlew feeding on stubble fields but they just squeal and fly off being too big a prey item? or the juv just lacks technique ---

Fascinating discussion in which I've learned something, particularly it never ocurred to me that there was such a weight difference between Feral and Wood Pigeon. Thats a big advantage of being a ringer, you actually get to weigh them. So its no use expecting Peregrine numbers to follow Wood Pigeon numbers upwards. Though it sounds like Peregrines may well be able to adapt to take larger items. No wonder the Wood Pigeon/Canada Goose/Greylag population is expanding so much. They say nature abhors a vacuum, looks like we need some serious predators like Goshawks to do the job!