FOLLOWING the huge interest in Worcester’s famous peregrine falcons, attention has now turned to a pair of kestrels.

For several years now, webcams have filmed the peregrine family’s every move, as successive pairs have reared their young on Worcester’s St Andrew’s Spire. The pictures have attracted huge attention with hundreds of visitors travelling from across the country to see them. The peregrines now boast their own Facebook page and Twitter accounts, attracting more than 2,000 followers.

Bobbin – Worcester’s current resident female peregrine – has recently been pictured flying past the spire in Deansway, but it is unknown how long she will stay in the city while there are no males for her to mate with here.

Cameras have now been installed in the city centre to film a pair of kestrels that have been together for a number of years and are likely to mate between mid-March and early April, meaning the chicks could hatch through the spring into early summer.

Chris Dobbs, a landscape architect for Worcester City Council who set up the peregrine project in the city, said there had been two years of successful breeding with the peregrines, but they are now in an interim phase so focus has passed to the kestrels.

Mr Dobbs said: “They have been nesting there for quite a long time, maybe 20 years. If it’s the same pair no one knows, no one knows what their life expectancy is.

“It’s only recently that we have seen them as a regular breeding pair in Worcester. There’s lots of eat, it’s an ideal habitat. They are thriving.” But Mr Dobbs said it was unlikely the peregrines and the kestrels would be competing for space.