Peregrine falcons have colonised towns and cities across the UK, nesting on cathedrals, office blocks and bridges. Urban populations provide welfare opportunities through nest cams and public engagement, while facing novel threats.
Urban peregrine welfare is generally positive — city birds have abundant pigeon prey, reduced persecution compared to rural raptors, and relative freedom from agricultural pesticide exposure. However, urban threats include window strikes, entanglement in netting, and secondary rodenticide poisoning from eating rats and pigeons. Pigeon culling programmes using anticoagulant rodenticides in pigeon-rich cities create secondary poisoning risk for the peregrines that eat poisoned birds. Volunteer peregrine watch groups at nest sites during the breeding season provide welfare monitoring and public education simultaneously. Nest cameras at urban peregrine sites engage millions of viewers — a welfare-positive byproduct of the urban colonisation.