Yvelines: the birth of baby falcons to experience live on YouTube

Pink notebook 2.0 with births to follow live on YouTube. It is not one, but four happy events that a couple of kestrels expects to live in the next few days.

These birds are installed in a nest box equipped with a camera, arranged at a sixty meters highon one of the two imposing chimneys of the Cristal incineration plant in Carrières-sur-Seine (Yvelines).

The four eggs were laid between April 22 and 29, 2024. “Incubation lasts between twenty-seven and twenty-nine days,” explains a company spokesperson, well versed on the subject. Mathematically, they could hatch any time soon, any minute even. The chicks will then stay warm in their nest for around thirty days, before taking flight in July.

The nest box was to accommodate pigeon hunters

The presence of this species at the top of the waste reprocessing plant is a bit of a coincidence. The nest box was installed there at the initiative of the site management, in 2005to attract the peregrine falcon, a skilled pigeon hunter, an unwanted bird because its droppings damage the installations.

This raptor, renowned for being the fastest bird in the world, has never shown the tip of its beak in Carrières-sur-Seine. On the other hand, the kestrel, its smaller cousin which inhabits the Carrières/Montesson plain, quickly found its habits here. From, every year or almost there are births.

The operation is closely monitored by the Bird Protection League (LPO). “The nest box remains exceptional. It is rare that we are able to place them and the population is decreasing,” congratulated the Île-de-France Ornithological Center (since merged with the LPO), as reported in a press release.

Other nests on the second chimney

“We don’t know if it’s the same couple who comes back from one year to the next,” says our contact at the company. These birds like high points, to nest, but also to spot their prey before diving. “We easily spot the kestrel when it hovers,” we are told.

Therefore other specimens nest on the second chimney of the factory. And they too will give life in the coming days.

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