Wednesday July 7th

The river formed a small stream in the middle of a very muddy bed - matching the colour of the sky! We are promised rain, and the Downs can certainly do with a lot, many places are as brown as the river with the grass looking dead.
At Sea Walls a Cormorant and a Heron were on the river side, together with Common Gulls, Herring Gulls, Black Headed Gulls and a couple of Lesser Black Back Gulls, these squabbling over something in the mud.
One of the adult Kestrels sailed past on the warm southerly wind, then flew around the corner into Walcombe Slade. No sign of the youngsters this morning, they are probably over in Leigh Woods.
At the Peregrine Watch another Heron (or the same one) was searching the grass on the river bank where I suspect there are frogs.
There was one very fast fly-past of a Peregrine just in front of us. Three of the young birds were perched in a tree under some ivy, and about halfway down the opposite quarry face. Until Chris Jones pointed them out to me I had not seen them, I was looking too high up the cliff. Once visible they are obvious, especially when facing across the gorge showing their white fronts. They were moving around in the tree, so that sometimes they disappeared into the background. Chris passed another picture on to me.

Four Young Peregrines by Chris Jones, June 2010

Monday, Tuesday, July 5th, 6th

My first cycle rides for a couple of weeks - the Kestrels and Peregrines are all very active. The young Kestrels, I'm told there are three of them - have been flying around between Black Rock cliffs, the Gully and opposite into Leigh Woods, I have not seen either parent. I visited Whitesands Bay just outside St Davids last week, and watched another pair of Kestrels, which I think may also have been young birds from theier colouring. I even saw a Chough - but only as a fleeting glimpse.
As to the Peregrine youngsters, all five of them, for which this is a 'photo taken by Chris Jones, have been perching over on a ledge in the quarry opposite, sitting on the Raven's nest, in the yew tree, and perching in the upper branches of the trees on the river slopes of Leigh Woods. This morning one of them circled over the Peregrine Watch for a while; in my binoculars I caught it make a feint at a passing bumble bee! We think this is probably the lone (male?), he tends to stay apart from his four siblings. Yesterday the other four were quite close together in the quarry, whereas one (this one?) was over in a dead tree a hundred meters to the right. The parents had deposited a dead pigeon on the cycle track - probably out of sight of all five youngsters - anyway it was ignored and eventually thrown onto the river bank by passing walkers.