It’s 6.45am on a crisp autumnal morning. I am 183m up, standing on the roof of Tower 42, in the middle of London’s Square Mile.
The morning light has stirred and the sun is about to rise. I watch as commuters emerge from buses and Tube stations, scurrying in all directions like streams of ants.
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My attention, though, is on a peregrine that is sitting on a ledge of the Oxo Tower, across the River Thames in Southwark. Through my telescope I can see that the bird is focused intently on something.
Suddenly, it leaps forwards off the ledge, wings folded at first. As it spreads its wings I realise it must have spotted some prey and locked onto it as it powers north across the Thames.
It’s exciting to think that this apex predator, carving across the sky with knife-edge confidence, is in London. The city, for all its noise and bustle, has become one of the world’s busiest for peregrines, an urban realm perfectly suited to the fastest animal on Earth.
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The peregrine’s journey into the capital has been nothing short of remarkable. Once driven close to extinction, with its total UK population after World War II judged to be in the low hundreds, this species has reclaimed Britain with the same audacity it uses when plummeting at more than 320kph after prey.
And nowhere is that revival more visible, more tangible, than here in the Big Smoke.
London’s skyline, a jagged forest of tower blocks, hospital rooftops, cranes and cathedral spires, has become prime real estate for a bird that historically nested on remote sea cliffs.
Indeed, as a younger birder, coming across a peregrine in its natal habitat was the highlight of any day out birding.
After surviving the devastating effects of poisonings caused by agricultural pesticides in the late 1950s and 1960s, and the wholesale persecution they once suffered (though illegal killings are still
a problem), peregrines have bounced back.
Peregrines first started nesting in London in the mid-to-late 1990s, working out that structures such as The Shard or Tate Modern aren’t just buildings – they are launchpads, commanding lookouts and places to raise a family far from ground-level disturbance.
The birds fit very well into the pace of city life. They sit statue-still on ledges, impervious to traffic horns and ambulance sirens, surveying the high-rise kingdom beneath them.
Peregrines were also drawn to Britain’s capital by an inhabitant synonymous with the city’s streets: the feral pigeon. This food source was so abundant that the colonising peregrines’ territories, which hitherto were up to 6km from their nests, contracted to be much smaller.
I recently presented a BBC World Service programme on urban peregrines and was surprised to learn that there were more than 100 pairs in the Greater London area.
It did make sense, though. During my raptor-watching sessions from the lofty heights of Tower 42, I often noted upwards of six territories across the skyline.
I’m always pointing out peregrines to Londoners who have no idea that such birds live above their heads. The reactions are always the same: disbelief, delight and a sudden widening of their sense of place.
Peregrines belong to London every bit as much as the foxes skulking in back gardens or the pigeons lolloping around parks.
So, the next time you’re out in the city or under the shadow of a tall building, look up. You might see a peregrine slicing through the sky, patrolling its part of the city – proof that, even in the heart of a metropolis, wildness still reigns.
Top image: a pair of peregrine falcons on St Paul’s church in Deptford, London. Credit: Getty
