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Monday, 26 February 2018

Commuting Peregrines

During the early afternoon of 16 Feb, Mark Darlaston and Adele Rennells were at Hartland Point to count Red-throated Divers. They watched two Peregrines gaining height, then setting out purposely for Lundy in continual wing-beating flight. Mark says "Having my scope set up I followed them for c15 minutes until they were tiny dots (at 50x mag), then lost them as Lundy appeared in the background. It was a crisp day with very sharp visibility and the resolution was pretty amazing in that I could see sheep grazing and people walking on the top of Lundy through the scope, so I probably had followed the two birds around three-quarters of the way before I lost them. A tentative estimate that a Peregrine would be doing around 30-40mph in a straight purposeful flight like this would see them cover the 11 miles from Hartland Point to Lundy in a bit under 20 minutes. Perhaps a day's foraging flight to the mainland when food is scarcer on Lundy in winter?"

This mirrors a journey in the opposite direction witnessed by Tim Davis & Tim Jones on the morning of 11 Dec 2010, when a pair of Peregrines that had apparently roosted on Lundy overnight circled upwards over the Castle and headed off at height directly for Hartland Point, not deviating until they were lost from sight.

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