Animal sculptures on the exterior of the British Museum of Natural History, London. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
While the rest of the world realigns, the little reported super-fast 200mph peregrine falcon is once more king of the London skies. There is even such a thing as the London Peregrine Partnership now, a kind of City firm invested in Falco peregrinus. This has been created to protect them when breeding and nesting in the capital. It may not be the bald-headed eagle but I know some Londoners immensely proud of its return. The Partnership actually comes on the back of what became too many persecutions and peregrinations faced by these birds of prey, coming mainly from illegal trading but also from pesticides and toxic chemicals, the avian equivalent of Big Pharma. When the peregrine falcon abandoned the London scene altogether, ignoring the Samuel Johnson maxim that when you tire of London, you tire of life, some people believed it gone forever.
What they make of London this time round is anyone’s guess. Maybe they’re amazed by everyone’s abstemiousness, as London goes through the motions of smartening up its act (unless it’s just the price of alcohol). Or maybe they fancy themselves as a cast—right collective noun—of Eddie Redmaynes from The Day of the Jackal. Either way, these creatures have the most wonderful of faces as well as coats of feathers like ancient coats of arms. Only the mice in the parks will be diving for cover but the mice can be pretty nifty too. It is territorial aggression against common buzzards attracting most of the complaints against peregrine falcons in other cities—like Exeter—but here in London no one minds when they prey instead on rats, more of which later.
One friend asked in a moment of genuine eccentricity which actor I would ‘cast’ as a peregrine falcon. If complexity my criterion rather than darting eyes, I told him I would probably go for David Costabile from Billions. Perhaps trying too hard to match my friend’s eccentricity, I asked if he knew that the Ancient Egyptian solar deity Ra had the head of a peregrine falcon. He said he didn’t but what he did know somehow was that any building work in London near the nest of a peregrine falcon needs a specific licence from Natural England.
I sometimes believe I see bats at night close to where we live. I am pretty sure it is them dancing in the glow of a London streetlight, chasing what only they see despite being blind as bats. I am told the London bat most likely seen out there is the common pipistrelle. They are so tiny they can fit in the palm of a small hand. Amazingly, they can also eat as many as 3,000 insects a night. Pure carnage. I tell my eccentric friend there is a London Goth Meet-up in the capital which maybe the indigenous London bat community should know about. Bats start hibernating this time of year, in fact, so any Goth meet-ups will have to proceed without them until April. I don’t know if anyone has seen the footage doing the rounds of upside-down bats flipped in such a way that they look like characters standing at the bar of a Goth nightclub—it is well worth the look. Goth subculture actually began in London with a solid-haired Siouxsie and the Banshees. Its bat-like cousins—cold wave, death rock and ethereal wave—would surely be equally welcoming to the common pipistrelle.
The London skies have been busy. I have mentioned the London parakeet in the past but two far more rare and extremely colourful parrots took to the skies above the capital a few weeks ago after fleeing London Zoo. Lily and Margot—their names—are two critically endangered and beautiful blue-throated macaws, clearly with what perhaps we should call Thelma and Louise dispositions. Regardless, these two obvious freedom lovers—more used to a Bolivian savannah than a north London landmark—were found 60 miles away from the capital. This was where the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) described them as ‘in good health’. It was not recorded if they said anything upon re-arrest. I must confess that after reading about them I thought again of Jack Nicholson with his fellow patients by the harbour denying all knowledge of anything other than everybody else’s serious academic medical careers.
Remarkable to consider that even our garbage bins are redesigned to out-fox the fox. At night I can hear them still struggle to open them, still not having given up. As if one day a light will suddenly come on in their heads and they will have cracked it. The night is for foxes, for sure, though the sight of a wandering one during the day is not uncommon. You occasionally see them slink past like former rock stars. Certain cultures swear that the fox possesses great spiritual significance and should be treated as a spiritual guide. Certainly London’s foxes first hit the city in earnest at the end of World War One. Demob happy or otherwise, spiritual or not, or the ghosts of former soldiers, as some people would say, they never left. The London Wildlife Trust reckons there are as many as 10,000 foxes in London. That feels like enough for official representation at the London Assembly. However, to say their numbers are still growing is a common myth. What they call ‘maximum densities’ were reached for the vulpine population a long time ago. Indeed, the foxes themselves keep the number at a constant level.
Unfortunately, not everyone likes them. No matter how waistcoated-up they can appear in beautifully rendered London beer commercials, some people think they will eat their babies. Four years ago, here in south-east London, one mysterious Londoner, a father perhaps, like a deranged William Tell, actually began with a crossbow killing these nimble creatures. Less extreme, though not entirely unrelated, is the occasional sight of middle-aged men marking their territory by relieving themselves at certain points around their garden, even scattering cut human hair that they have gleaned from their local barbers in order to keep away the foxes.
I was reading last week that compared to the rural fox the urban fox has a smaller brain. Something to do with an evolutionary trick caused by too many interactions with human beings. They also help get rid of one or two pockets of the rodent community. In fact, they say it can take just a few weeks for a fox to root out the rats in your garden.
London, of course, is not without its rats. If there really are twice as many rats as people in London, as everyone is always telling us, we will presently have 18,851,244 roaming our drains, attics and walls. Trouble is, they just don’t help their cause. They have a serious image problem. Rats average five litters a year. Maybe that’s it. That means a dozen offspring from each litter. Which equates to 60 rats from just one female in one year. More peregrine falcons anyone? Or foxes?
