THE names of the four peregrines at Salisbury Cathedral will honour the work done by the NHS locally to rollout the Covid vaccine.
The names will come from the field of medicine and public health, and will also have a connection to Salisbury and the Cathedral.
Salisbury Cathedral had been used as a vaccination centre since January 16 and on Saturday, May 1 the Sarum South Primary Care Network team delivered the final jabs in the cathedral itself.
The Cathedral said: "In honour of the amazing work done by the Sarum South vaccine team working in the Cathedral until recently (and all the other NHS teams who have been working so hard on the rollout), the Peregrine team decided to offer up names from the field of medicine and public health. All have a connection, however distant, to Salisbury and the Cathedral."
The chicks were all ringed yesterday (Wednesday, May 12) on the cathedral tower.
Pictures by James Fisher
Phil Sheldrake, Salisbury Cathedral’s Nature Conservation Adviser said: “We have ringed them slightly earlier than last year, but they are all of a good size and you can see their adult feathers starting to show.
"They will grow very fast from now on and it won’t be long before we see them hopping off the nest to explore the balcony.”
He established the peregrine project at the Cathedral eight years ago, getting the birds back after a 60-year absence.
Along with Gary Price, Clerk of Works and Granville Pictor, the Cathedral’s peregrine specialist, he has overseen the development of the programme.
Today the Cathedral has three camera feeds on the balcony and watching the live stream has proved very popular during the lockdowns, with thousands of people viewing remotely both in the UK and abroad.
Sine going live in March this year the webcam page has recorded nearly 188,000 unique page views.
On Monday, May 3 the page was access 9,000 times, the highest daily viewing number to-date.
The Cathedral says videos posted on Facebook have clocked up more than two million views in the past two months.
And records show that across 2020 to 2021 viewers from 88 different countries have watched the birds.
Now the chicks have been ringed they are sporting a distinctive orange ring, the colour used for peregrines ringed in the South region – and every ring bears a unique three-letter code that allows researchers and livestream viewers to keep track of each individual chick from now on.
This year’s letters are TVD, PTJ, TND and PHJ.
The chicks are believed to be two females and two males - weighing in between 530 grams and 830 grams – the heaviest being a female that already weighs as much as a fully grown male (830 grams).
They will remain on the Cathedral Tower balcony until June, when they are expected to fledge, and will stay around the Cathedral for at least month after that, learning survival and hunting skills before going out on their own.
The Cathedral says voting for names of the chicks will be launched shortly.
To find out more about the peregrines or to watch the live stream visit the Cathedral's website.
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