Wildlife with Andrew Sheppard (From Worcester News)

Wildlife with Andrew Sheppard

10:11am Monday 20th April 2009 in

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EASTER is usually symbolised by newness and birth.

Images we see around this time of year usually comprise newborn lambs, baby rabbits and perhaps most of all, eggs.

At the RSPB, we love the egg theme of Easter; especially since Worcester’s peregrines are currently sitting on four eggs which are due to hatch before the end of the month.

Our peregrine mother is a bit special in this sense as she lays four eggs every year, whereas other peregrine mothers will often only lay two or three. These beautiful eggs are the size of golf balls, and vary in colour. In our peregrine’s clutch, two are pale terracotta and two are pink.

Of course, all birds are laying or sitting on eggs at this time of the year, though some of these birds are less popular with people than others, like Worcester’s gulls for instance.

Most people in Worcester will be aware of the large numbers of gulls making a racket around the city, though you may not know that these are mostly lesser black-backed gulls.

Just under half of all of Europe’s lesser black-backs live here in Britain, and while it might feel like they are all here in Worcester, spare a thought for the people of Gloucester, who share their city with a record number of more than 2,000 pairs of lesser black-backs!

After hatching and fledging, the lesser black-backs migrate to the Mediterranean, where they spend the first few years of their life, before returning north to Britain as adults in very crisp black and white markings to breed themselves.

Worcester’s rooftops have become breeding grounds for the lesser black-back only over the last few decades. In fact, even in the 1970s it was still quite rare for this gull to lay eggs on buildings.

Eggs can be found in many unexpected places. The cuckoo is a well-known example of sneaky egg laying and will lay its egg in another bird’s nest, and can be seen, or more likely heard, at the edges of Worcester’s woods. There are kingfishers in Worcester, who lay their eggs underground in a burrow on the banks of the river, where they remain protected from predators.

Perhaps the largest eggs in Worcester are laid by the swan, which makes a huge mound the size of a beanbag out of leafs and reeds, and lays its clutch on the top.