“Live feeds of peregrines are drawing bigger audiences than any Sunday congregation  — despite the odd complaint when they eat prey on camera.”

Ben Spencer, Science Editor, The Times & Sunday Times

Our cathedral peregrines are making national news! This article appeared in The Times this weekend. Tap here to read it.

Watch all the live peregrine webcams here.

High on the east side of Derby Cathedral’s tower, three peregrine chicks were getting ready to fly the nest last week.

Joy on high: the cathedral peregrine falcon cams watched by millions

“Almost every year one of them comes to ground and we have to dash down and save it from being run over by a bus,” said Nick Brown, a volunteer with Derbyshire Wildlife Trust.

In cathedrals and churches up and down the country, volunteers like Brown, 79, are facing similar worries. In Lincoln, Wakefield, Worcester, St Albans, Salisbury, Ely, Leicester and Norwich, peregrine chicks have been flapping their wings and getting ready to fledge.

Although it tests the nerves of these dedicated bird lovers — and the millions of people watching live — the presence of peregrines in these historic towers is a remarkable conservation success story.

Their choice of home has provided a window into the peregrines’ world. Most cathedrals have installed cameras above the nests — for an audience that vastly outnumbers their Sunday congregations.

More than four million people from 73 countries have viewed Derby’s “nest cam” since it went live in 2007. Worcester has had 500,000 views this year alone.

The birds are also drawing visitors in person. Cromer Church in north Norfolk has installed a 50-inch screen in the café, beaming direct from a nest in the tower above. Worcester holds viewing sessions on the cathedral lawn two or three times a week, attended by up to 100 people. Salisbury holds a “date with nature” session six days a week in June and early July, with telescopes pointed to the nest.

Peregrine falcon chicks hatched at Salisbury Cathedral in May. There are three cameras trained on their nestbox

“Peregrines were virtually extinct in England in the 1960s and 1970s,” Brown said. Widespread use of the agricultural pesticide DDT had a devastating effect on these birds, causing the shells of their eggs to become too thin to survive their mothers’ weight. Since the chemical was banned in 1986, the UK’s peregrine population has boomed, increasing from 385 breeding pairs in the 1960s to well over 1,700 today.

Their dramatic recovery has been most noticeable in the cathedrals and churches where peregrines, which traditionally nest on cliffs, are now making their homes.

Peregrine falcons are superb fliers. When diving to catch their prey, they move faster than any other creature, achieving speeds of up to 240mph.

But as young birds they are less confident — which is why volunteers often have to rescue them from the ground. “This is always a bit of a worrying period,” Brown said.

Francis Hickenbottom, 62, of Wakefield Peregrine Project, said:

“They like big stone things with knobbly bits. When they fly into a city and see a cathedral, that’s just another big stone thing with knobbly bits. They don’t care about what is happening on the ground — whether it’s waves crashing into the cliff or traffic and sirens. It’s not part of their world.”

According to Luke Phillips of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), peregrines are unusual in choosing cathedrals for their nests. “You might see the odd kestrel, but it’s really only peregrines,” he said.

“The trend [for watching the nest cams] is brilliant,” Phillips said. “The more people that connect with peregrines, the more people who feel a love for these birds, and the more people will want to protect them and protect nature more widely.”

Viewers will occasionally a grislier sight than they expected. Peregrines are apex predators, and they choose to nest in cathedrals because they come with a ready-made supply of food.

The cameras will often catch the parent birds tearing apart a fresh catch and feeding it to the growing chicks.

“Their primary diet is pigeons,” said Dave Grubb, 65, part of the project at Worcester Cathedral. “Most towns and cities have a big feral pigeon population, so there’s plenty to eat.”

In Derby, Brown has found the hunters will pluck any bird out of the air.

“They’ll take anything that they can see flying,” he said. “We’ve had over 53 different species of birds recorded as being taken by the peregrines here, including some that only fly at night. This was a bit of a puzzle to us at first, but of course, the tower is floodlit at night, which is perfect for the peregrines because they just sit up there at the top of the tower and watch out for anything in flight.”

This has led to some complaints from viewers.

“I spend a lot of time explaining death to people,” Hickenbottom said. “We get letters of complaint to the cathedral when our peregrines eat a lovely woodpecker. But these aren’t pets. They are wild animals.”

Despite being a protected species under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, which makes killing or even disturbing peregrines a criminal offence, they are still regularly shot in many rural areas, particularly on moorlands where they threaten young grouse.

“The dark side of the peregrine story is one of persecution,” Hickenbottom said. “The cathedral sites are really helping the species, because it’s pretty nasty out there for them.”

Even in towns and cities they sometimes come to harm. In Wakefield, where breeding racing pigeons is a popular pastime, Hickenbottom says the peregrines are sometimes threatened with poisoned meat. In Cromer this month, a man in his forties shone a laser into a nest, which made the mother peregrine fly off, leaving her chick unprotected.

In Derby, however, Brown is starting to breathe more easily. “All three chicks have now fledged and are doing well,” he said. They will stay in the area for a few months, possibly until the autumn, while their parents teach them to hunt. Then they will make their way into the wider world, looking for their own cliff or spire in which to roost.

Watch all the live peregrine webcams here.