Peregrine falcons outside my window

As I sit in my room, I can see a white block of flats dominating the skyline against the sea and at the top of this block of flats live a family of peregrine falcons. Last summer I watched them for hours as the parents surveyed the city below and sometimes the three youngsters would playfight in the sky, diving at hundreds of miles an hour. The peregrine falcon is the fastest animal in the world when it dives through the sky. They went away for the Winter but now they're back.

There’s a webcam that shows the interior of the peregrines’ nestbox. At the moment all you can see is the back part of the mother peregrine as she incubates her eggs. The only movement is the swell of her breathing and the wind rustling her feathers. I haven’t seen the male yet this year, but he must be around somewhere gathering food.

On youtube you can see the mother laying her first bright pink egg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GNXz1vmNew&feature=youtu.be. And here is the live webcam: http://www.justin.tv/brightonperegrines? - /w/2934149296/4. Last year we only discovered the peregrines outside the window after the eggs had all hatched and the youngsters had grown up. This year we can watch the whole glorious, surprisingly quick process from egg to young adult.

Isle of Wight wheatears

I was in the Isle of Wight for a few days staying at Rose’s parents’ flat. I went on my own and she joined me later. On one of the days I went for a walk along the clifftops to the Ventnor Botanic Gardens, along a path that dipped and rose between coves and vegetation.

Jackdaws proliferated and I could hear greenfinches and great tits, then at one portion of beach, Castle Cove, which a castle shaped house used to overlook before it was demolished for residential development, there were a number of mystery birds flying about. I looked at them through broken binoculars and struggled to focus. They seemed like wagtails, but their colouring wasn’t quite right. The feathers were greyish brown and the breast was orangey. They sported stylish black eye stripes.

The little birds bounced about discretely, they sung no songs, looking around on the grass and on the sandy beach, perhaps for insects. A teenager was riding a motorbike up and down a grassy bank in his garden. He rode it cautiously down and then as fast as he could the way back up. I followed the birds to the low sandstone cliffs where they seemed to be living.

When I got home I looked them up in a bird book and found them to be wheatears, I think. Their Latin name is Oenanthe oenanthe.