The Falcon chicks are still staying near Tynsky church are directly at it. This is gonna last several weeks.

Our farewell gift are several pictures and three short videos. Thanks for zour favour of the Flacons and of our web pages.

See you (maybe) in a year

Those quotaton marks before and after the word flown have got their meaning. Yesterday evening, Anežka flew down to the roof of Týnský church and Maria half flew hal fell in the gallery og the tower.

As we wrote before, this period is critical for the chicks. They are not capable of a real flight can easily fall into the airshaft or eaves, or even land on the street, which is dangerous as well.

Since Sunday, the chicks have been being supervised by a group of volunteers.

On Monday, Luboš Peške ringed both chicks. He is sure they are both females and so we could decide on their names. We chose ANEŽKA and MARIA, the former belongs to Tycho and Tyna's own chick, the latter to the added one. We got inspired by Tynsky church's bells' names. There is a bell called Anežka at the falcon's tower, which was cast in 1989 and weights 956 kg (its lower diameter is 112 cm). At the non-falcons tower Maria having been cast in 1553, weights 6450 kg and lowe rdiameter equals to 204 cm.

On monday evening, a nestling from artificial breeding was added into the nest. Týna and Tycho's care should prepare it for a life in the open nature perfectly.

The adding itself went on without any problems - Týna got back in about 5 minutes.

Still we do not know the sex of both nestlings. However, the first suggestions are that Týna and Tycho's own nestling could be female, while the other male.

From many suggestions of names you sent us we so far prefer Sim (a Czech abbrevation of 'Falcon internet nestling') and Toyen. We still expect your suggestions on sokoli@fido.cz.

Today, 29th of April, a nestling was hatched out of an egg. We took a deep breath. Our fearful expectation that the egg would not be fertilized failed to be true.

Týna (mother) helped the nestling get out of the egg and refused to let Tycho (father) in during the first hours of its life.

Make up the nestling's name. But because we don't know its sex, the name must be neutral. Youer suggestions send to sokoli@fido.cz.

Videos :

Besides the sounds of the Astronomical clock, the Oldtown square in Prague offers even the sounds of one of the rarest birds in our country - the voice of Peregrine Falcons. 'Panny Marie před Týnem' church, formerly known as Tynsky church, one of Prague's main dominant, was occupied by exceptional inhabitants hundreds years ago as well. Some time before, the church hosted White Storks, which upset believers as the frogs and snakes fell down from the nest from time to time. Now, Falcons are living at one of the church's tower and lead their nestlings out almost every year.

Peregrine Falcon has never become an usual bird in Czech republic, and there was a period of time when it quite disappeared. Today, ten to twelve pairs have been nesting here, two of which nest in towns. Apart from Prague, they found home in Plzen town. Pairs of falcons living in the rocks in open nature almost certainly originate in the birds having been spread out in Germany during last 10 years. Prague's pair, which has been changing over years, was founded by the female who had flown away from falcon breeding. In Plzen, the falcons were set down on purpose by men.

The first time the falcons tried to nest at the Tynsky church was in 1995, but they raised their nestlings successfuly a year after that. Since then, the members of the pair changed: current female comes from Germany, the origin of the male is unknown.If you watch pictures taken from our cameras, you can safely distinguish the female by her bigger size and a lowerd wing as a result of hitting electrocity leads. At the beginning of their nesting, they would worm up 4 eggs, but so far they have broken 3 of them by sitting upon.

In case even the third egg will be destroyed, we are about to put a dummy egg into the nest. New eggs (belonging to falcons living in captivity) or small nestlings are expected to be added into the nest.