‘Once in a lifetime’ experience as falcon spotted in Hartlepool town centre

The falcon was spotted in York Road on Tuesday morning./Photo: Carl Gorse

People were left surprised and seagulls were flustered when a peregrine falcon appeared in Hartlepool.

The bird of prey was seen in the middle of York Road before flying off to a rooftop on Lister Street and spending over an hour on the rooftop of Joanna’s Fish Bar.

Photographer and carer Carl Gorse was among those who crossed paths with the falcon and managed to take pictures of the bird.

The bird flew off to a rooftop on Lister Street./Photo: Carl Gorse

Carl, 41, has said he had never seen a falcon in the town centre before.

He said: "I was walking into town to get some shopping and I turned around and I could hear all the seagulls, they were going mad.

"The bird was in the middle of the road, I thought it was going to get run over. It’s quite busy on York Road.

"It then went on another roof on Lister Street. I waited for about 10 minutes to see if it was going to come back down, but it didn’t.”

Carl says the RSPB confirmed the bird was a peregrine falcon./Photo: Carl Gorse

The keen photographer initially thought the bird was a sparrowhawk.

But he sent photos of the bird to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and said it confirmed it was a peregrine falcon.

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Carl, from the Belle Vue area of town, has described the experience as “once in a lifetime”.

He said: "To get as close as this was once in a lifetime, really.

"I was over the moon when I got next to it and I got my pictures. Because I’ve done it before, when you go next to something like that and you get your camera ready or your phone and they fly off.”

Carl continued: "I went and got my shopping, got back home and it was still sat there on the roof. It was on top of Joanna’s Fish Bar roof. It was there for about an hour.

“I’m definitely going to be keeping my eyes on the rooftops.”

According to the RSPB, which could not be contacted for comment, the latest estimated UK population of peregrine falcons is around 1,400 pairs.

The organisation says that around 20 per cent of the European peregrine population breeds in the UK.

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