PEREGRINES IN CENTRAL FLORENCE

In the early 1990s, while attending a summer concert of classical music at dusk in the main central square of Florence, Piazza della Signoria, my attention was attracted by a falcon flying high around the old tower (Torre di Arnolfo), and apparently roosting there. In the following days, I was able to identify it as a Peregrine Falcon Falco peregrinus brookei (i.e., the southern European race).

I soon discovered that actually it was a pair, using the main (world renowned) monuments of central Florence for perching (i.e., Torre di Arnolfo of Palazzo della Signoria and the Cupola del Brunelleschi).

Since then I followed the pair of falcons for years, in my spare time - obtaining the permission of access to amazingly beautiful and panoramic high places in central Forence, both from privates and from the city hall. I have spent hundreds of hours across several years in observation, also involving naturalist Maria Lucentini and Simona Romano from Lega Italiana Protezione Uccelli (LIPU, Italian BirdLife’s Partner).

We discovered that the pair was regularly summering and wintering in downtown Florence, every year, and we also unveiled the diet composition of the falcons quite in details, and even their prey preference (Serra et al. 2001).

The most interesting finding of our study was that, contrarily to what generally thought, the peregrine pair did not show any specific preference for the pigeons – usually by far the most common birds of the cities worldwide.

The comparison between the proportion of preys taken by the falcons and their relative abundance in downtown Florence showed that the falcons were not selective at all, the only selectivity shown being that relatively to the usual height of flight of potential preys – i.e., only birds normally flying higher than the roof level of buildings were taken, indiscriminately.

Article on web site of Provincia di Firenze: Nest with a view (2007) describing the discovery of the breeding in 2006 and the establishment of a web cam at the nest on the following year.

References

Serra G., Lucentini M. and Romano S. 2001. Diet and prey selection of nonbreeding peregrine falcons (Falco peregrinus brookei) in a urban habitat of Italy. Journal of Raptor Research 35(1): 61-64.

Serra G. 2007. Identikit del Falco pellegrino Falco peregrinus. Provincia di Firenze, 29 pp.

@ p. taranto

@ p. taranto