Cities are their cliff-side homes

Perching on the side of an old power station chimney with St Paul’s Cathedral to the north and the Shard, Europe’s tallest building, to the east, is not where you might expect to glimpse the world’s fastest bird. Yet Tate Modern, and London landmarks including Battersea Power Station and the Houses of Parliament, have been home for several years to peregrine falcons. A surprising flash of the wild in the heart of the city, the powerful bird of prey is also a specialised hunter of feral pigeons, considered such an urban pest that in 2003 a ban was imposed on feeding them in Trafalgar Square.

With cities’ abundant food sources and tall buildings providing a predator-free equivalent of the species’ traditional cliff-side home, the raptor’s success has extended far beyond the capital. Having colonised urban areas from Aberdeen to Cardiff, ecologists now believe it is only a matter of time before peregrine falcons are breeding in every major UK town and city.

“All those born and bred in cities, that’s their habitat that they’ve grown up in. When they’re drifting around the country, they find little towns and cities elsewhere … and that’s what they’re used to,” says David Goode, a veteran ecologist and author of a new book, Nature in Town and Cities. “That’s why I say it won’t be long until they’re in every place.”

The peregrine is just one of the many species that have invaded British cities in the last few decades, encouraged in no small part by an urban ecology movement that flourished in the 1980s. “There are those that have done well —pigeons, foxes, gulls — because of our food,” says Mathew Frith, an ecologist and policy director at the London Wildlife Trust. “There are others that have done well without our intervention, such as the black redstart, known as the ‘bombsite bird’ because of its liking for the cover that bomb sites provided. Then there are the species that benefited from conservation efforts, such as the red kite.”

Over 1,000 breeding pairs in UK
A large bird of prey with a wingspan of nearly two metres, the kite was on the verge of extinction until a wildly successful reintroduction began in 1989. Today there are more than 1,000 breeding pairs in the UK. Frith believes that with kites recorded flying over Hackney, they could be breeding in London in as little as a decade as they expand from existing strongholds, such as Reading.

In the Midlands in particular, the urban wildlife movement grew as industrialisation went into reverse, and nature recolonised derelict land. And it happened despite, not because of, the traditional big conservation groups. “There was a big sand quarry in Birmingham, which had wonderful wetlands and great sand cliffs. The local authority in the late 1970s decided it would be a useful landfill site, which triggered very local opposition,” recalls Chris Baines, vice-president of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts since 1984, and an ecological adviser.

Badgers and foxes are now in most major urban areas. Deer crowd on city fringes, with numbers high enough in Richmond Park to necessitate a twice-yearly cull. Water voles — Remember Ratty in The Wind in the Willows? —can be found in Bristol and Newcastle, living happily free of one of their main modern threats, imported American mink. Like the kingfishers, both have been helped by cleaner waterways as the Environment Agency has cracked down on polluters, with the UK racing to meet EU water quality standards. But this invasion has not been entirely peaceful. There are famously more foxes living in London than there are double-decker buses and, while some people love to see them and leave out food to entice them, others pay snipers to kill foxes for £75 per animal.
Yet experts say fox numbers in the UK are relatively stable. Professor Stephen Harris of the University of Bristol, the authority on the subject, says there are around 33,000 urban foxes. Besides, ecologists argue, killing foxes would be pointless because they are territorial, with a territory of 25 to 40 hectares on average at the smaller end. Kill one, and another simply claims the territory. “Until you manage the food issue, any kind of control is kind of pointless and expensive,” said Frith.

Foxes aren’t the only wildlife that some people want to shoot. James Marchington, a gun sports journalist, found himself under fire from conservationists last December for publishing a video showing how to shoot ring-necked parakeets in London.

Originally from Asia, the bright green birds have gone from a population of zero to more than 30,000 in less than four decades, and are now found in London, Manchester, Birmingham and Oxford. The invasive species has the potential to be a serious agricultural pest by stripping fruit crops — if it can successfully expand into rural areas from the urban strongholds it has colonised.

Wildlife, a potential meal?
Another section of society appears to view urban wildlife in a more practical, albeit no less destructive, light: as a potential meal. Ecologists in Sheffield report anecdotes of migrants living rough in the city’s parks catching fish to eat and roasting squirrels. They say eastern Europeans have the skills to catch and safely cook animals.

A recent study by the Food Standards Agency and the Food and Environment Research Agency appears to back up those anecdotes, finding growing evidence that more people are eating fish they have caught from rivers and canals. “This may be partly due to the increased numbers of migrants from eastern Europe where this is part of traditional culture and partly because of a desire to try new foods encouraged by celebrity chefs,” the study concluded.

Ecologist David Goode says that while there is an occasional public outcry after isolated incidents of conflict, the British are accepting of urban wildlife on the whole. One of the reasons for that accepting attitude could be stressed-out city dwellers’ simple self-interest. Ecologists are at pains to stress the mental health benefits of nature in cities, while a major report by the environment department found the health benefits of living with a view of a green space are worth up to £300 per person each year.

Melissa Harrison is in no doubt she’d count herself among those benefiting mentally from being around urban wildlife. Brought up in semi-rural Surrey, she realised she was very unhappy while living in heavily built-up Dalston, east London, but couldn’t put her finger on the reason why. “I went to Devon for a week, and realised that was what I needed,” she said. “I moved south to Clapham – I had no garden but could see a tree out of the window. It had a magpie nesting in it, I could watch the leaves change, I had a connection.” Inspired by getting a dog and moving next to Streatham in south London, she wrote a well-received novel called Clay about a boy and his connection with wildlife in the city.