'Nestflix': The peregrine falcon livestream that has Australians glued to their screens |
Since the end of August, tens of thousands of Australians have been tuning in to "Nest-flix", a high drama 24-hour reality channel that first became a hit during the Covid pandemic.
Sometimes compared to Game of Thrones, it features airborne fights, cuckolds, births, breakups and earthquakes, courtesy of its stars - the peregrine falcons who live at the top of a Melbourne skyscraper.
Currently fans are waiting for the moment when this year's chicks, which began hatching at the end of September, attempt their first flight.
They can be seen running up and down flapping their wings on the ledge – 34 storeys high – while their mother has been flying past with pigeons in her talons. "She's teasing the chicks, going 'You wanna eat? Well you gotta fly'," says Dr Victor Hurley, founder of the Victorian Peregrine Project.
The goading and deliberate reduction in food encourages them to fly and helps them lose weight, he says. "Their wings are growing and getting bigger and they get a better wing load ratio to wing load area so they can lift off easier."
Dr Hurley was first tipped off to the peregrine nesting site on the office building at 367 Collins Street in 1991, the year he established the Victorian Peregrine Project, a volunteer group dedicated to the preservation of the species.
But he realised the falcons were having no success because they had laid their eggs in a metal gutter, which acts as a heat sink, drawing warmth away from the nest. "Rain gutters in winter in Melbourne, that was always going to end badly," he says.
Dr Hurley recommended the building managers put in a nest box - which they agreed to do - and the following year three chicks were born. A CCTV camera was put in to observe the nest in 1993 and every year at breeding time Dr Hurley would drag his large screen TV into the foyer so that people in the building could watch.
Then in 2017 a webcam........