While many people are busy in the garden this weekend with the annual garden bird count, bird lovers in Vught are glued to the webcam to follow every movement on the tower of the local Petruskerk. Since a few days, a camera has been hanging in a nest box of a pair of peregrine falcons.
“I have been working on it for five years and now it has finally worked,” says Johan de Boer. He lives in Kerkstraat and when he comes out the door he sees the immense tower of the Petruskerk.
“It’s a difficult church to climb on the outside part. I’ve only been up once and that was very exciting. I went back almost halfway.” The nest box was hung in 2017, it had to go up in parts.
Around the turn of the year at the end of 2017, a female peregrine falcon had already spent some time on the tower of the church and not much later a male peregrine falcon arrived. But the male turned out to be a cheater. “He also had a nest at the provincial government house and neglected the nest here,” Johan says with a smile.
25 kilos of gravel
“Since the last breeding season, both falcons have always stayed close to the Petruskerk and we hope that they will soon start courting and mating again. They regularly fly together around the tower” says Johan. “The church is a rock for the falcons. Last week 25 kilos of gravel for the nest box was also dragged up.”
Piet van Asten from Helmond is a peregrine falcon expert and ICT specialist, he helped to install the camera at the top. The image can be operated remotely by the organization, so that you can view every corner in the cupboard. So they don’t have privacy, according to Piet.
Blood
“A lot of blood will soon be visible, because they are real hunters who tear their prey to shreds in front of the camera,” says Johan. “Pigeon enthusiasts are sometimes not happy with the nest box, I also have pigeons myself. It is noticeable that the pigeons are alert, that is also nature. The pigeons know that the peregrine falcons are nearby.”
It was possible to read the female’s ring the very first day the camera worked. She was ringed on May 3, 2019 in Mol, Belgium. She has also been seen in Tilburg, Den Bosch and Liempde in recent years, but settled in Vught last year.
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The camera in Vught is certainly not the only one in Brabant where you can see live what the peregrine falcons are doing. There are also cameras in Eindhoven, Tilburg, Gemert, Geldrop and Den Bosch, among others. Through Working group Birds of prey Netherlands you can look inside the different nest boxes.
Mountain climbers
“At the camera we also want to make a site where we not only show what is happening, but also make people enthusiastic about the rest of the nature in the area. I have also already found five enthusiastic mountain climbers who will train volunteers to cabinet, because that has to be done safely,” says Johan.
If all goes well, the peregrine falcon lays eggs in March or April and then it takes about a month for them to hatch. Another month later, the young fly. “Hopefully we’ll all see that too,” says Johan.