In a quiet corner of Windmill Hill flats, the first of two yearly clutches of captive-bred Peregrine falcons is growing up fast.
Reared in captivity and trained by experienced falconers at the Raptor Unit of the Gibraltar Ornithological and Natural History Society, the three birds will eventually be released into the wild.
Some will settle in Gibraltar, while others will move further afield. Thanks in part to this breeding program, this majestic bird now has a firmly-established presence in Gibraltar.
There are currently seven pairs living and nesting on the Rock, as well as one lone falcon trying to establish itself.
The birds normally nest in the nooks and crannies of the sheer north face of the Rock, where access is tricky and young birds are relatively safe.
Vincent Robba, who heads the Raptor Unit, said he and his team coordinate the first clutch of captive-bred birds to coincide with birds breeding in the wild.
It means that once the captive-bred birds are trained and released, they are more likely to find birds of a similar age.
The birds are trained from seven weeks of age using traditional falconry methods aimed at refining their flying and hunting skills.
Over time, they gain confidence in the wild until eventually, their hunting skills perfected, they stop returning to the falconer’s lure.
Sometimes during training, the GONHS raptor team has introduced young captive-bred birds into area where they know wild birds of the same age are learning to fly and hunt. They call this “synchronised hacking”.
“Once we saw our young falcons playing for hours in the air with wild birds,” Mr Robba said.
Two Peregrines were successfully released this way last year and were adopted by Peregrine families in the wild.
Although the Peregrine breeding program has been underway since the mid to late 1990s, it took several years before the first fertile eggs were laid.
It was 2004 before the first Peregrine was born in captivity to a disabled female – she had a broken wing - that had been artificially inseminated with semen from a bird in Spain.
The chick was reared and trained in captivity and later released into the wild.
But although the GONHS team took encouragement from this success, the program was often frustrating.
Sometimes the male falcons were reluctant to mate. On other occasions when they did mate, the eggs produced were infertile.
Over the years, the number of successful clutches increased and these days, several falcons are reintroduced into the wild every year.
Remarkably, all were born from the same female. In all, she has produced 21 birds, of which 15 have already been released into the wild.
Through its contacts with Spanish ornithologists, GONHS believes some of those birds may have established themselves in the Cádiz region.
