Worcester Cathedral's Peregrine Falcon livestream receives 500,000 views

Worcester Cathedral has launched its Peregrine Falcon livestream on You Tube as the birds return to the nest and the first egg is laid.

The adult birds, named Peter and Peggy by Cathedral followers, have been visiting the nest box for a few weeks now and making a scrape (a hollow in the gravel for nesting).

Now the first egg has arrived, on Wednesday 12 March, and the team has high hopes this will be followed by more and that the chicks will hatch next month. There will hopefully then be lots of exciting milestones to see including feeding, ringing and then fledging towards the beginning of June.

For the first time in over 10 years, a mated pair of peregrines moved into the Cathedral in 2022 and successfully nested, produced and fledged four chicks.

The same pair returned to the nest box, built by the Cathedral’s works team, again in 2023 and 2024 and fledged four chicks successfully.

Last year the 24 hour livestream received nearly 500,000 views from across the globe!

The cameras are back this year, and the action will also be livestreamed on a screen inside the Cathedral.

Chris Dobbs is the coordinator of the peregrine monitoring project.

He said: "You never know with peregrines. Sometimes they get fed up with a site, or its not quite right, and they move on. But these two have settled in really well. She's had 12 successful young peregrines now."

Later in the season, the Cathedral will host a series of drop-in sessions with a team of experts, cameras and scopes to see the birds up close and share their knowledge on this fascinating species. Dates and times will be confirmed by the Cathedral in the coming weeks.

Peregrines have been in and around Worcester for hundreds of years. They are depicted in the Cathedral’s great West Window and parts of the stonework too. The territory, which is the whole city area, changes hands occasionally as pairs move around or are injured over the years. This pair has been here for six years, although we suspect at some point there was a new male (mortality in birds of prey is quite high).

Peregrines are the fastest living thing on earth, able to reach speeds of over 200mph in a dive while hunting (called a stoop). That’s much faster than a cheetah, at around 70mph.