The digital peregrine: a technonatural history of a cosmopolitan raptor

Journal article

Humans, non-human animals, and technologies are increasingly entangled. Using the peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) as an illustrative example, we propose ‘technonatural history’ as a theoretical and methodological approach for observing, describing, and examining the role technologies play in shaping human relations with other species. After nearing extinction in the 20th century, peregrines have become woven into the fabric of everyday urban life and are a frequently sighted urban raptor in the UK, nesting on high-rise buildings and church spires since the late 1990s. Their unexpected presence in cities symbolises hope for multispecies conviviality amid the contemporary ecological crisis. As their populations resurged, crucially, webcam and livestreaming technologies developed rapidly. Peregrines were one of the first animals to be broadcast over the internet via ‘nestcams’, granting broad publics access to their intimate lives. We examine the related technological histories of livestreaming technologies and natural histories of peregrine falcons in the UK, tracing the emergence of ‘the digital peregrine’ and its manifold implications for more-than-human and digital geographies. To do so, we build on oral history interviews with people associated with digital peregrines throughout the UK: nestcam technicians, peregrine conservationists, professional ecologists, activists, and citizen scientists. While digitisation brings broad publics closer to these cosmopolitan raptors, they can only ever grasp at the wildness of peregrine falcons and their wider milieus as the digital peregrine is a distinct entity, encountered via its own set of affects and affordances. In the peregrine's case, digital technologies create unexpected and radical opportunities for urban conviviality, signalling the positive potentials technologies host for forging meaningful more-than-human connections.

Authors: Searle, A; Turnbull, J; Adams, WM

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Wiley
• Journal: Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
• Volume: 48
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 195-212
• Publication date: 2022-08-31
• Acceptance date: 2022-08-08
• DOI: 10.1111/tran.12566
• EISSN: 1475-5661
• ISSN: 0020-2754
• Language: English
• Keywords: nestcams; technonatural history; livestreaming; urban ecologies; peregrine falcon; digital ecologies