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Original narrative written for Revision Library; a fictional account informed by general public facts about peregrine falcon conservation, no external source reproduced.
High above the traffic and the shoppers, on the ledge of a stone tower in the middle of a busy UK city, a pair of peregrine falcons has raised chicks every spring for the past six years. Peregrines are the fastest animals on the planet: when they dive to catch prey, known as a stoop, they can reach speeds of over 300 kilometres an hour, tucking their wings tight against their bodies like a folded arrow.
Priya Chandra, a Year 6 pupil, first noticed the birds when her class visited the tower on a school trip. Her teacher, Mr Bailey, pointed out a scruffy platform of twigs wedged onto a stone ledge sixty metres above the pavement. He explained that peregrines do not build proper nests; instead, they scrape a shallow dip into whatever ledge they find and lay their eggs there. This bare scrape is known as an eyrie.
Peregrines were once extremely rare in Britain. In the 1960s, a chemical used on farms called DDT built up in the birds' bodies and made their eggshells so thin that they cracked before the chicks could hatch. Numbers fell so sharply that conservationists feared the species might disappear from the country altogether. Once DDT was banned, however, peregrine numbers slowly recovered, and the birds began to move into towns and cities, where tall buildings make excellent substitutes for the cliffs they would naturally use.
Cities also offer a surprising advantage: an abundant supply of feral pigeons. A peregrine's diet is almost entirely other birds, caught in mid-air during a stoop, and a city centre can support several hunting pairs without them ever running short of prey.
After the school trip, Priya asked whether she could keep watching the nest. Mr Bailey found a live wildlife webcam, hosted by a local conservation charity, trained on the ledge, and for the rest of term the class checked it each morning before registration. They watched two fluffy white chicks hatch in May, and by July, both had fledged, wobbling into the air on their first unsteady flights.
Priya has since started a wildlife diary, and she plans to check the webcam again next spring to see whether the same pair returns to the tower.