There will be a lot of hustle and bustle in the nest box atop the stack of the Litvínov Refinery of the ORLEN Unipetrol Group in the coming weeks. After warming the eggs for one month, the falcon couple has welcomed four new chicks. The fresh parents will care for their babies together in the coming weeks. Before the chicks grow up and are entirely self-sufficient, their parents will take turns to warm them and bring them food like rodents, pigeons, gulls, and other smaller birds. The peregrine falcon stories, including regular feeding, can be watched nonstop on the online stream.
“Just like last year, the parents of the falcon managed to bring another generation of this unique bird of prey into the world. This will be the twelfth litter of falcon chicks raised in the Litvínov box, which makes us very happy and we are looking forward to the following weeks, when it will be possible to observe their feeding and rapid growth,” says Lucie Pražáková, director of the ORLEN Unipetrol Foundation.
The female falcon laid the eggs in March and warmed them with her body for about one month until the young hatched. Then, a whirl of worries started for the parents, mainly to get them enough food because the chicks need nutrients for their fast growth. Ornithologists climb the stack about three weeks after the young hatch to check and band them with reading rings. The rings help them later to identify the birds and grasp their numbers in our territory.
The falcon parents fly out to the nest’s surroundings to get food every day. They bring the food to the young several times a day. “Peregrine falcons nesting in our sites have a different diet, depending on the offer. In locations with a dominating pigeon population, the falcon’s presence can often help reduce their unwanted numbers. Yet, peregrine falcons never force all pigeons to leave or hunt them out. Peregrine’s presence does not mean the prey dies out, but their population recovers and develops defence behaviour. Then, falcons must react to that by adapting their hunting tactics. Thus, we can see an eternal race between the predator and its prey,” says ornithologist Václav Beran from the ALKA Wildlife Association.
Peregrine falcons also thrive on other ORLEN Unipetrol Group premises. The female laid eggs in Kralupy halfway through March, and three young hatched there a week ago. Last year, the falcon couple brought up four young chicks there.
About the ORLEN Unipetrol Foundation
The ORLEN Unipetrol Foundation launched its activities in 2017. During its existence, it has distributed CZK 9 million among 323 secondary-school and university students of natural sciences and technical fields as part of its scholarship programme. The school grant programme distributed over CZK 12.6 million among 94 primary and secondary schools throughout the Czech Republic to support educational and scientific activities. The Foundation supported 45 teachers with CZK 1.6 million within the grant programme for teachers. Ninety primary schools have already joined the educational project, ‘Plastík a jeho kouzelný kufřík’, since 2021. This project provides schoolchildren from the first to the fifth grade with an excursion into the world of chemistry through entertaining experiments. Additional information about the ORLEN Unipetrol Foundation’s mission and other activities is available at www.nadaceorlenunipetrol.cz.
Contact details:
Lucie Pražáková, director of the ORLEN Unipetrol Foundation
E-mail: nadace@orlenunipetrol.cz
Telephone: +420 736 506 939