Watch The Birdie

You know it’s time to think about moving when even the local birds have CCTV installed. That’s what’s happening on one Tower Hamlets residential block, opposite the Greenwich Peninsula.

Cameras have been fitted atop the tower to protect a family of peregrine falcons. The birds have been nesting at the site for half a decade, and it’s feared their eggs may have been stolen in previous breeding seasons.

We're not too sure but we suspect there may have been some foul play, the birds may have been disturbed or some of the eggs taken.

Said London Biodiversity Partnership’s spokesperson Dusty Gedge (whose unusual name rather appropriately rhymes with gusty ledge).

Short of physically nailing them down, the only way to prevent that foul/fowl play is to carefully watch the birds (like a hawk, presumably).

The CCTV images will be relayed to a data centre in Docklands, who will alert police if any raptor-botherers show up. But here’s the exciting bit. The BBC reports that ‘There are also plans for the images to be beamed onto giant public screens’. Superb. Just as long as we don’t have to drive past 18-foot moving images of Bill Oddie.