The Young & the Restless Peregrine Falcons

It is 04h30 and I am woken from fitful sleep by a clamour of screeching, seemingly right next to my head. It takes a second for me to orientate myself and process what is happening. I am sleeping on a lumpy fold-out chair on the fifth floor of the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital in Rondebosch, Cape Town, and I realise that about a metre above my head is one of the breeding boxes for the hospital’s well known Peregrine Falcons. The juveniles are up early and in a demanding mood.

- By Ian-Malcolm Rijsdijk

The previous week my son had undergone a kidney transplant and while my wife (who donated the kidney) recuperated at home, I was with my son at the hospital day and night during his recovery. During the first five days in the ICU after his operation, I heard the occasional screech and once, through a crack in the blinds, I saw the distinctive muscular blur of a falcon. But the ICU is on the third floor – well below the ledges that the birds use during the day – and, rather like being on an interminable transoceanic flight, the blinds remained closed much of the time.

For a period, then, the falcons remained a peripheral, fleeting presence.

After my son’s release from ICU, we moved into the renal ward on E-floor. His cubicle faced east and through the grimy windows, I saw some amazing sunrises as well as some eerie nightscapes accompanied by cars that belted up and down Klipfontein Road. I was there with him all the time, with the exception of trips to the main entrance to pick up meals delivered by friends. On one such trip an adult falcon swooped low overhead and saw offtwo Kelp Gulls hovering over the hospital. During another excursion, the adult challenged a Common Buzzard and it regularly tussled with Pied Crows.