Falcon names go to the polls

Ringed chicks

After nearly 300 nominations and some deliberations, six potential names have been picked to go to the polls.

As you will notice from our poll (at the top of this page), the six names are all female. This is because – as you may have guessed – we’ve been able to ascertain during the ringing yesterday that the peregrine falcon chicks are made up of two females and a male.

The male chick, as you will be aware from previous blogs, will be named Ernest in tribute to a Falconcam follower who sadly passed away last year.

So, we need you all to now vote for your favourite female name and the top two will be given to the remaining chicks. The deadline is 5pm on 30 May.

The names have been chosen by our Environment Team and are mostly in reference to inspirational people:

Lady Hay – Grace Marguerite Hay Drummond-Hay was a British journalist who was the first woman to travel around the world by air

Isabella – Isabella Bird was a traveller, explorer and writer

Amelia  – Amelia Earhart, an aviation pioneer and author, was the first female to fly across the Atlantic on her own

Katiyana – In Inuit language means ‘Night Snow’

Cecily – A female character from Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest

Gwendolen – Another female character from The Importance of Being Earnest

Whatever your favourites are, we’d love you to vote for them.

In the meantime, to update Falconcam viewers, we also thought we’d share an exchange of correspondence we’ve had with former television presenter Tony Soper, who is the co-founder of the BBC’s natural history unit. In an email Tony was kind enough to tell us: “I watched your saga through to the end last year – had it on the favourites bar!  Looks like a good start this year, I wish you all a successful season.”

We’d also like to let you know that the bird ringing this year was very successful. The three chicks were all ringed by professionals from Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust, causing minimal distress to the birds. If you’d like to read more about bird ringing, read Erin McDaid’s blog: The Importance of Bird Ringing.

And finally, we hope you enjoy the most recent video highlights from Falconcam.

Chris Birkle

Nottingham Trent University