Friday 27 February 2009

Food exchange and ee-chupping

A quick trip up Derby's Cathedral Tower this lunchtime led to some great sequences being captured on DVD. Its clear that courtship is well underway, with food exchanges (see video clip)and nest scraping going on frequently. The familiar seagull-like "ee-chupp" call is very distinctive when heard, and to see the smaller male bird stand absolutely still for two or three minutes, facing the larger female over the nest scrape is a magic sight to witness.






Of course our adult peregrines falcons are now seen so much more frequently in the webcams than they were even just a week or two ago.

Visitors to this blog are also staying around more it seems; our ranking on tPicture of Top 500 birding websites counterhe Top 500 Birding Sites has slowly crept back from the mid 100s to around 80, and at the height of nesting activity last year we peaked at number six. (See icon on the lower left of this blog).



Of course our birds care nothing for all of this - the cycle of life turns once again. Last year four eggs were laid around 28th March (3rd April in 2007), with mating recorded on three occasions around 12th-13th March 2008. We hope watchers will contact us immediately if you do see any very special moments that we should be capturing for posterity. Follow this link if you want to see mating clips from 2008 or view any of our video clips on YouTube.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent little video! I'm so excited to see what Joys are instore for us this Year!

Anonymous said...

The Night Screening is much clearer now...

Brilliant!

Thanks Nick & The Team!

21.41pm

Karen Anne said...

Peregrines - on the nestbox and pudding cam area.

Ee-chup!

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the delightful video clip, quite made my morning.

Anonymous said...

For anyone who hasn't tried this yet:

In Firefox 3 there is a zoom function which is great when viewing the webcams.

Hold down the CTRL key and press the plus or minus keys on your numeric keypad. To reset back to normal, hold down CTRL and press zero. ie

CTRL + zoom in
CTRL - zoom out
CTRL 0 reset

I think there's a similar feature in IE7 but I don't use it.

Terry M, Herts, UK

Anonymous said...

Peregrine on nest box ledge.

10.11am

Anonymous said...

Good Tip, Terry.
I think in IE7 it's Ctrl and wheelmouse to increase or decrease in size.

I'm using IE8, but I'd guess it's the same. Hadn't realised it also increased image size as well as text. Aways ready to learn something new! Thanks

Nick M.
Derby Museum & Art Gallery.

Anonymous said...

Peregrine on Nest Platform Ledge...and what looks like a dead bird on the right hand side of the platform.

22.03pm

Anonymous said...

1 Peregrine on Nest box...1Peregrine on ledge below.

11.00am

Anonymous said...

Female nest scraping!

Anna, Ripley

Anonymous said...

10.08am 06/03 saw good pair give a good display in scrape.
Regards
Colin