I remember when I first became interested in wildlife (and birds I s'pose, in particular), I could only dream about seeing a peregrine, or a red kite or a barn owl. Even goldfinches were a rare treat.

On the other hand of course, I was tripping over other birds such as song thrushes, lesser spotted woodpeckers (in our large garden) and cuckoos.

These days and the song thrushes are a rare treat for me, I've not seen a lesser spotted woodpecker since I moved out of the house in which I grew up, I might hear a handful of cuckoos a year if I'm lucky but conversely, red kites are hourly visitors over our garden, I can see barn owls all year if I look hard enough, goldfinches are omnipresent on garden feeders and even peregrines can be found in most of our large towns and indeed cities.

Lets get one thing straight though. Falco peregrinus (literal meaning "wandering falcon") has a common English name of "Peregrine". Not "Peregrine falcon" no matter what Springwatch tv presenters say (for that matter springwatch the "Great spotted woodpecker" is just that.... not the "greater spotted woodpecker".

Peregrines are peregrines in the same way as kestrels are kestrels (and not kestrel falcons), hobbies are hobbies (and not hobby falcons), merlins are merlins (and not merlin falcons).

Generally speaking (at least in the UK) falcons are female birds (hens) of the Falco genus whereas tiercels are the male birds (cocks).

Thus if you refer to a peregrine as a falcon, you are immediately referring to the hen bird - which is fine.... as long as you're sure.

When Anna and I lived in Reading (as we did for the past 5 or so years) I was delighted to see an urban peregrine stoop at the feral pigeons feeding on the small recreation ground behind our terraced house. I later learned (and saw for myself) that this peregrine was one of perhaps three or four roosting regularly on the tallest office block overlooking the old station - one can still see peregrines in the centre of Reading pretty-well each day if one occasionally looks up (it amazed me that very often the most impressive bird of prey in the entire world was perched or flying above the residents of Reading heads  - and they had no idea).

Now we live at the edge of Bracknell and I'm glad to say that the tallest (disused) office block in this god-forsaken town (its worse that Slough I think) seems to be the home (or at least roost) to two more urban peregrines.

I was doing a spot of evening shopping at Waitrose last night and I watched both the tiercel and falcon fly in and roost on the top floor of this ugly eyesore - good for nothing apart from providing a lovely tall man-made cliff for the height-loving peregrines.

Of course, the office block provides homes (and nest sites also) to a good number of feral pigeons - what more could an urban peregrine want?! Height, shelter and plentiful food...

Like I say, many (if not most) of our larger urban areas have peregrines now. They set up home on office blocks, power stations, pylons, cathedrals, churches, art galleries, tower blocks - anywhere with a little height. Far from being rare these days, they have adapted magnificently to urban sprawl and the banning of DDT - a real success story in the raptor conservation world.

They have even changed their behaviour to suit their new environment - country peregrines would roost and sleep during the hours of darkness, but urban peregrines use the glow from street and building lights to hunt at night - and they do this quite deliberately.

Many of our birds (especially (and unfortunately!) our less common or water birds like corncrake, snipe, golden plover woodcock and grebes) tend to move in the air at night often. Grebes,woodcock and corncrakes tend to only fly at night (you'll hear grebes occasionally fly over at night - especially if you know what to listen for!). The urban peregrines watch these pale-bellied birds light up at night because of the orange street light pollution and take them as prey.

You know, there are plans afoot to take down the disused office block in the middle of Bracknell on which the peregrines roost.

I am torn here, because the blessed thing can be seen for miles, and is an awful advert for our (current) town - but at least the peregrines like it.

I returned at first light this morning to get a few photographs of one of the birds which had clearly roosted on the building overnight.

Anyway.... it was quite delightful to see these magnificent birds so close to our new(ish) house again. I thought I'd left them in Reading, but should have known better!

What else have I seen (or not seen as it happens) this week?

Firstly, our local barn owl has deserted its hollow tree roost which is a shame. I hope it has not been hit by a car and has simply found another roost for the time being. (Barn owls, I think, are the most transient of all our bird species when they're not breeding).

More swifts have been checking out the roof of our new(ish) house this morning (like last week also). This gives me great hope that we may have nesters next year or the year after, which I can film again.

Arrack (one of our bengal cross kittens) today brought home a beautiful male  emperor dragonfly (the first I've seen all year). Unfortunately I was too late to save the insect - but once again I am reminded of the fact that everyone seems to be concerned about cats preying on garden birds (whose numbers in general are increasing year on year) but no-one seems concerned about cats preying on moths, butterflies and dragonflies (MUCH more worrying for me).

After yet another damp squib of a week with high winds for most of the time, I hear from Tuesday onwards we may get something a little more settled - not high summer or anything and there'll be some flies in the ointment, but perhaps better than we've had for weeks now.

Looking at the long term jetstream forecast, I personally can't see anything settled, nor any chance of any Azores high creeping over the UK until July at the very earliest....

Aw well....