symondsyat

The limestone bluffs above the picturesque river Wye, where it winds around Symonds Yat rock on it's way to join the Severn, have been a traditional nesting site for peregrine falcons for as long as anyone can remember. Unfortunately, the site was abandoned nearly 50 years ago when the British population crashed due to poisoning by the use of organo-chloride pesticides such as dieldrin and DDT.

Following the banning of these products, the peregrine population gradually increased and in 1982 a pair returned to Symonds Yat to breed. Since 1984 the RSPB, in association with Forest Enterprise, has shown the birds to visitors to the Forest of Dean and Yat Rock at an information point high above the river. There have been several pairs of peregrines since that time and, in all, more than 40 young have been reared.

2007 REPORT
The peregrines this year nested in the left hand cliff face. Three chicks fledged - two females and one male. All have been recently showing well and providing visitors to the Rock with spectacular displays and interesting behaviour. However, the young male has now moved on.

A big thank you must go to all those who have helped the project during the 2007 season and we would welcome more volunteers to join us on the Rock.
Peregrine Survey in the Wye Valley and Forest of Dean 2007

We conducted a survey in an attempt to establish how many breeding pairs of peregrines there are on the cliffs and quarry faces in the district of the Wye Valley and Forest of Dean.

We opted to start when the eyasses (unfledged chicks) were almost ready to fly which would help us to find the eyries, prove the peregrines had bred and give us a head count of offspring. However, as the searches often took longer than anticipated, thereby making the project drag on a bit, we were too late, in some cases, to establish how many offspring there were as they had already fledged, so, where this happened, we opted for finding what fledglings we could to prove breeding.

At three sites, only pairs of adults were seen, we assumed these had not bred or had possibly been robbed. We believe this was the case at at least one of the sites. The peregrines had bred at six other sites, including Symonds Yat (Coldwell Rocks) where the new female had three offspring. At one of the sites we found five eyasses which is not unheard of but is unusual. At another site the pair appears to have bred on a pylon and fledged just one juvenile.

We found four kestrel families which fledged later than the peregrines. We also saw a few large stick nests of ravens but as they breed so much earlier we did not see any birds.

Gavin Black and Ken Eames

Updated August 2007