Although you might think, oh, you know, it must have been difficult to watch.
It actually wasn’t, because in that moment I remember I was just really excited.
Despite being out all the time, seeing all kinds of things,
I’ve never seen this before.
I’m Iolo Williams.
I’m a wildlife TV presenter,
but for 15 years, between 1984 and 1998, I worked for the RSPB.
I’m going to take you back to late June 1998,
and part of my role was to monitor rare breeding birds.
And on this particular day as heading up this quite narrow, quite steep valley.
But on the way up, I knew that I was going to pass a massive old Ravens nest,
but had been taken over that year by a pair of nesting peregrines.
All of a sudden
I could hear the commotion and I looked down to see all three chicks.
Two males and a female.
They’d been out to the nest maybe at that time,
probably anything between one and four days.
So they weren’t experienced birds at all.
But the commotion was because the adult female was coming
back to the nest with and of course the chicks knew they were going to be fed.
Only this day was a little bit different..
Looking through my bins, I could see this
powerful bird of prey carrying a fairly large prey with her.
And as she came near, I could make out the prey.
It was a collared dove.
So she’d been a long way off to get that because the nearest urban area,
the nearest village, is about, I would say, maybe two, two and a half miles away.
It’s a long way off.
And that’s where she would have had to go to get the prey.
Usually the female would come back, the prey would be dead,
she’d land either on the Nash stall on a ledge nearby,
and then she would leave the prey for the young
to fight over or even to feed themselves.
But that didn’t happen this day..
She came back
and then she gained height and she circled around,
and the three young chicks were screaming away, begging for food,
and by now, I’d lost all interest on the moor, on the harriers
and the merlin.
For all I know, the harriers could’ve been sky dancing, you know there could have been
Strictly Come Dancing going on there for all I know.
My focus by now was just down on this peregrine nest on this cliff,
and then she gained height and she was almost level with me by now,
and the three chicks were coming up after her.
And through my binocular I could see that actually the dove wasn’t dead,
she was still very much alive.
And what happened next was a real eye opener,
because I’d never seen anything quite like it before.
The female let the collared dove go,
and the collared dove could still fly.
She flew away.
She flew back up the valley from where they’d come,
and this collared dove just turned around and went out of sight.
And the female peregrine,
the adult female, went straight after it like an arrow zipping up the valley.
and I thought that collared dove isn’t going to get away.
Surely on the next thing, she comes back
down the valley again with this collared dove.
And I watched as she came and she was holding on tightly.
and as she flew she actually bent down
to take a pack at the back of the collared dove’s neck,
and I thought, that’s it, she’s killed it.
But she hadn’t done, and it at this point that I realised what was going on,
she was bringing back the prey alive for the chicks,
for the three chicks to learn how to hunt.
By now, one of the chicks, a young male, had landed back by the nest,
still screaming.
But the other two young female,
a young male, were in the air, getting all excited all over again.
And she dropped the dove.
And I saw that the dove couldn’t fly as well as she had before.
And the young male went after it and had a go and came down,
and bare in mind,
You know, these are these are the Lamborghinis of the bird world,
you know, an adult peregrine can dive at speeds of over 200 miles an hour,
stooping down and hitting its prey, often killing it.
And then
before it hits the floor, coming back down, getting hold of it, carrying it away.
So they’re magnificent birds, real masters of the air.
But of course the young birds weren’t,
they had to learn all of these skills.
And despite the young male having a go trying to catch this dove,
it just couldn’t,
it just couldn’t.
And the dove eventually got away again,
heading up the valley,
didn’t get as far, wasn’t flying as fast.
And the adult female circled around,
she went after it again, caught it one more time.
And by now I was thinking, is this bird going to get away?
Is it going to escape this time?
Although you might think
oh, you know, it must have been difficult to watch.
It actually wasn’t, cause in that moment I remember I was just really excited.
I was watching something
that very few people get to watch, I was watching something that
I’d never seen before, despite being out all the time, seeing all kinds of things.
I’ve never seen this before.
And then when she came back again, I saw this time,
the dove didn’t get very far and she just caught up with it,
didn’t stoop on it, caught up with it and got hold of it,
and then turned around and brought it back up again.
And this time let it go,
and this time, the dove
Well, to be honest with you, it really could barely fly at all.
And it was the young female that had to go this time,
and she stooped down, not from on high, but she stooped down.
She hit the dove,
I remember her hitting the dove, but she didn’t hit it in the right place,
she supposed to hit the dove, you know, by the head of a neck and try and, well,
at least injure it, so that it lands or if you can kill it outright,
she hit the dove somewhere near the back,
a puff of feathers came up, started to tumble down,
but the dove just kept on going.
At this point, the young female, she must have been a bit confused
and she just more or less just gave up.
She just screamed, circle and screamed.
And the dove tried to get away one more time.
And this time poor thing, just got, you know, maybe 50, 100 meters.
And I could watch it all the way in the adult female
went after caught it again easily this time,
brought her back to the nest,
onto the the the nest itself this time,
the big old raven nest on despite all three chicks now.
And despite all three chicks now
being able and screaming out to begging, Come on, we want food,
we want to be fed.
She just ignored them,
she obviously now she’d had enough and thought,
no, no, no, no, listen, I’ve worked hard for this.
This now is going to be my meal.
And she mantled, she had a wings out over the the dove,
she dispatched it, she killed it and she started to feed,
and she just ignored the cries of the young female and both young males,
and she just fed on that and she fed on it for about good 20-25 minutes.
And eventually I could see her fly off with a full crop,
real bulging crop here full of meat.
And then the adult female and both young males went into squabble over the remains.
It was an amazing thing to witness, and witness so close as well.
To watch this, the sort of king of birds when it comes to speed, you know,
the fastest animal on the whole planet, just bringing back this dove
and trying to teach the youngsters how to hunt.
By the time those youngsters leave the adults,
that takes more or less two months or so.
They have to be able to hunt,
they have to be able to stoop at speeds of 200 plus miles an hour,
they have to be able to catch prey to survive.
Bare in mind that over the first you know,
year, 18 months or so, maybe one in three young peregrines survive,
that’s it,
and they’re lucky if they live to be five or six years old.
So, all of that learning has to be crammed into those first two months.
And I suspect that that would probably have been the first time
that the adult female peregrine would have done
that, would have brought back to life prey, released it for the young to chase.
But, you know, I’ve been I’ve been going back up onto those moors every year.
Now, I love my harriers, I love my merlins, I love my birds of prey, my peregrines,
and I’ve never, ever seen anything quite like that again.
