Blood and guts on the school field!
Our home town of Llandudno here in North Wales is pretty good for birds, we have sea on two sides of us, limestone cliffs towering above the town and fields on the east side. As you can imagine all this habitat provides homes for many birds, the grass fields are good feeding for waders such as Curlews and Oystercatchers that fly in from the adjacent beaches. The cliffs are home to Fulmars and Ravens which can often be seen over the town, but one more species uses the cliffs, the Peregrine Falcon. Few other species are as charismatic and exciting to see as the Peregrine. The world’s fastest bird, in a stoop perhaps as fast as 200mph! The sheer power and agility of this falcon is awesome to behold, we are very lucky that we can on occasion watch this majestic bird from our window as they tear across the sky in pursuit of their favourite prey, feral pigeons.
On the other side of town lies Craig-y-don School where the headmaster Marc Hughes is a very keen birder and he has got some good birds on the school list, including Waxwings recently! Yesterday Marc had a close encounter of the Peregrine Falcon kind, not a new bird for the school list but certainly the first time a sight like this had been seen! A loud commotion coming from the school field drew Marc’s, and everyone else’s attention. A large female Peregrine was sitting on the grass pinning an Oystercatcher to the ground, wow! As the children and Marc watched, the brutal power of the falcon was witnessed as the raptor dispatched the unlucky Oystercatcher. Marc quickly set up his scope, always in the car just in case, and the gruesome scene was soon in sharp focus filling the view. The children loved it! They queued patiently for a turn at the telescope to witness nature red in beak and claw. To see such a drama play out on some remote estuary or cliff top would be amazing but to watch it here on the school playing field was just incredible. If only we had teachers like Marc in our day!