Running a project like this costs money and we need to raise considerable funding to keep it going. For example, it costs £1400 per year for our two web cam streams to be hosted and a new flier will cost us over £400.So this blog entry is the first of 2009 to invite you to make a contribution.
The Derbyshire Wildlife Trust (one of the three project partners) is a registered charity and a 'not for profit' organisation. As such it is the best recipient of funds for the project. The Trust holds the funds and then pays the bills on behalf of all three partners.
Fortunately we received one large four-figure anonymous donation early on in the project's life which really set us up. That money is now exhausted as are the donations received last summer. So we do need new donations now to help us pay our expenses this summer. Two generous donations, from Jennie in Hong Kong and Roger in Austria, have set the ball rolling even before we asked!
Rest assured that any money given to the Wildlife Trust will be used only to support this project. We display an annual list of donors (but not the amount) on the project home page, but gifts can be anonymous if you wish.
All donations, however small or large, are acknowledged either by email or letter. You can donate in one of the following ways:
UK donors:
Post a cheque made payable to DWT to the Trust at East Mill, Belper, DE56 1XH including a covering note stating that your donation is for the peregrine project and your address so we can thank you.
Ring the Trust office in office hours (01773 881188) and make a payment over the phone by debit/credit card.
UK Taxpayers only: you can greatly increase your donation by filling out a Gift Aid form whereby the tax people give the Trust a further 25% of the value of your donation. The form can be sent by email or through the post…just ask.
Overseas donors:
Please email enquiries@derbyshirewt.co.uk asking for the codes you need so that you bank can transfer money to the DWT account. (Unfortunately Gift Aid does not apply unless you are a tax payer in the UK.)
Donors from most overseas countries can also ring the Trust (on 011 44 1773 881188 ) to pay by credit card......as long as you can work out when the office is open of course!
It helps if you would clearly mark on your payment that it is intended for use by the Peregrine Project, either in the current financial year or carried forward, if unspent.
Payments should only be made to one of the three Project Partners. Derbyshire Wildlife Trust is best placed for this. Please note that no other organisation or website is authorised to collect funds on our behalf.
Thank you in advance,
Nick Brown (DWT)
Ps. The Trust office is open until Thursday 3pm but then closed for Easter until Tuesday 14th April.
Pps. The photo shows one of the youngsters that we had to rescue last summer.....
Ppps: Nick M has added a slide show of the male bird sleeping it off in front of tower camera late on Tuesday evening.
63 comments:
US donors can call the office and make a donation by credit card also. To call from the US:
011 44 1773 881188
Works for France too! :-)
I think a lot of us from the United States would rather send a check than giving out credit card info. Could you please give us an address for this. Does this have to be a money order or certified check? To whom should this be made payable to? Thanks.
Massachusetts, USA
Having lived in Canada since 1973 I have found it cheaper to send a postal order in British sterling. This way the banks will not make charges for check. The charges are very high and most of your donation will be used up in charges. But this is my observance over the years of sending money from either the States or Canada.
Following on Ann's note about bank charges, some credit card companies charge for a foreign currency conversion, and some do not. Schwab's credit card does not.
Often the charge is about 3%. You can call yours and ask. Or look here for that info:
click here for currency fee info
I prefer to phone in a credit card because I am very lazy, and my intentions to send a check or do a wire transfer tend to molder away in my todo queue.
I used my credit card by phone when ordering the peregrine CD, and had no problem. Of course, the Derby folks have the utmost integrity.
This is a sort of crossover comment, tying in with Froona's "Last Post". I'm going to donate and I thought I'd like to, as it were, kill two birds with one stone (or rather make two birds flourish and live) and ask that my donation be made in memory of Froona Veldhuis - I'm sure this would make her very happy to know her love and care continues beyond the grave.
DWT, I'll be sending it through the post to you.
pax Canada
Karen Anne, I just googled Froona. name and found the page that way and translated it.
PS - I love the picture of last year's chick that had to be rescued. Was that the one that came down near the pub and the "likely lads" caught in the laundry basket. I still have a copy of that video from the telly, I think it's so hillarious. Those two lads were priceless, I loved them! I hope they're on standby for this year (although I hope even more that the "new improved" strip helps prevent falls)
Lots of very good points about bank charges etc....thanks for those. And thanks Sue and others in advance for your donations....it is very kind of you all.
The photo shows the first (of two males) that were rescued last summer (being held by NB as it happens)...not the second which NM and Tony G rescued outside another local pub!
And about this coming summer - we better not count our 'chickens' before they hatch had we? Remember 2007 when only two of the four eggs produced chicks!
Nick B (DWT)
It might be an idea to set up a facility for donors to contribute via PayPal, with a logo to simply click on. This would also make it easier and more secure for our overseas friends to make a donation.
Might be a silly idea, but is there any way that a project such as this can ask for funding trom the national lottery here in the uk. Andy.
My donation is in memory of Froona also.
Thanks Nick Brown for revealing which of last year's crash landers features in the picture. It wasn't "Tidder", as reported on the BBC. This is the one I still in my "favourites" and it still works. This is the address http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7462310.stm
If anyone feels like smiling, take a look!
Thank you for that, Sue. It really cheered me up!
Thanks Sue. That definitely made me smile too. What a cute chap (I'm talking about the peregrine chick of course!)
It would be good if we could donate through paypal. I find this way very safe. Joy
Just reread my last comment and I'm wondering why my brain and typing fingers were so disconnected! Sorry about all of the typos and what I was trying to say is that the photo on this blog section isn't the same chick as in the BBC film (but I still LOVE the film)
My apologies for digressing from the main subject but is there any way of telling which of the pair is male/female from the webcam pictures? I don't know where else to ask this question. Thanks
Kishore: not that easy to tell which bird is in view because although the male is smaller than the female, their plumage and colouring are similar. The male can fluff up his feathers and look bigger and, conversely, the female can tighten her feathers and look slimmer - depending!
Usually the female does much more of the incubating that the male. Being that much bigger, she can cover the four eggs more easily and - presumably - can warm them more effectively against her brood patch..which is an area of featherless skin on her belly.
So, if the bird looks very small it will be the male and if it looks very bulky, the female but sometimes it is really difficult to tell....
Colin, being a falconer, is used to handling and being close to this species and seems to be able to sex the birds much more confidently than the rest of us!
Nick B (DWT)
Is that the reason why the female is so much bigger than the male - to help with incubation? Or are there other reasons as well?
whoa! I just checked the webcam, and one of the birds is sitting right up against the four way camera shot - the camera/lens that was fuzzy and dirty - all I can see is an eyeball and a beak!!
A quick read of the peregrine 'bible' (the book simply called The Peregrine, by Derek Ratcliffe) comes up with these possible ideas:
One theory for the sexes being different sizes is that the pair can share the same territory but not compete (so much) for the same prey. The male can concentrate on smaller prey while the female takes larger prey, thus avoiding competing for a possibly limited food supply. It is also suspected that the females can carry prey, especially heavy prey, much further back to the nest than males, thus extending the range over which they can hunt.
The female can be as much as 50% heavier than the male - a very marked difference...and this difference is already present in the newly fledged birds - look at the photo of the male in my hands last summer - he was markedly smaller than the grounded female I caught later on.
However, not everyone agrees with the theory above.
Another reason for the male being smaller could be that the pair need to reduce potential aggression during courtship and mating. If the male were larger he could damage a smaller female - so better that he is less powerful than she is.
Ratcliffe thinks there could be some truth in both theories. At the time he wrote the book, there was no confirmed scientific evidence that males did indeed take smaller prey..so unless there has been new scietific study of this since Ratcliffe's day, I suppose the jury remains out!
Nick B (DWT)
Jan's completely correct - there's what appears to be a looming white shape somewhere quite close to "poo cam". With a bit of luck, the male peregrine (I presume) will end up doing an accidental bit of lens cleaning.
I've just added a new video clip to the very bottom of this blog entry of the male virtually asleep on top of the tower this evening, right infront of smudge-cam (or whatever we're calling it these days) Notice his "eyelid" (nictating membrane) which moves up from below.
Am also about to add an extra note to Last Post - Froona Veldhuis
I've captured some screen prints of the bird sitting in front of the poo camera. I could email them to be shared with the other members if I could have an email address to send them to.
BTW Nick thanks for all the useful info about the gender of the birds. Your're right its really difficult to tell which is male/female.
pax Canada 12.35am
changeover time at the nest
Oh yes, Nick, I hadn't noticed about that "eyelid", that's fascinating. I think our male HAS actually managed to clean the lens a bit too. I was sad to hear about the nest failure at Fort Dunlop (Birmingham) - but didn't they manage to confuse their birds anyway by putting out a semi-detached box and bewindering them with too much choice? They obviously don't have the benefit of an ace Derby quality team!
I was watching the "smudge cam" at around 9pm last night too and saw the male posing right next to the lens, it was really amusing. Talking of which, do you still plan to try cleaning up the pudding cam this week?
Kishore, if you look at the end of the blog entry posted 31 March (A Full Clutch) I think you can see the difference between our male (left) and female (right) by the shape of their heads and beaks. I think they have quite different shaped faces (but that's possibly not always true in the wider peregrine world!) The male seems to have a rounder head and his beak is sqaut and looks as if it's just been 'stuck' onto the front of his head, whereas the female has a sleeker shaped head and slightly bigger beak that blends into the tilt of her head more smoothly. Of course the female is ever so slightly more attractive than the male :)
Terri thanks for the info on the gender. There's so much to learn about these magnificent birds. Incidentaly, there was a wildlife program on BBC on which an experiment was carried out as to how fast these birds could travel through the air. The speed at which this peregrine was diving was recorded at 180mph. Here's the link if anyone is interested
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnT2joxnkqY
"Poo Cam" is no more - it's "Nice and Clean Cam" now. Well done Mr Peregrine!
Nick M - that was a very late blog last night. Don't lose too much beauty sleep! It's horribly addictive watching the web cams though, I agree.
Wonderful! I don't know how you managed it but "smudge-cam" (or poo-cam, or whatever...) is no longer.
Many thanks for a crystal-clear view once again :-)
Well Done! .. the camera is clean of peri-poo! We can once again see what is going on on top of the grotesque
Excellent images from the right hand camera. Well done team
It was the wonderful Nick M who toiled up the tower in his lunchtime and cleaned the lens - he tells me it was actually not poo but two feathers that had got themselves stuck across the lens!
Nick B (DWT)
Folks, am I imagining things or have we actually lost the multi view?
BTW in relation to the (ex poo) camera where are the nest cameras mounted? Just curious thats all.
The images coming from the (ex poo) camera shows what looks like a little mammal on the ledge (if you look at the image its just off right bottom). Could this be dinner for tonight for the birds?
Correction on the last comment
(The images coming from the (ex poo) camera shows what looks like a little mammal on the ledge (if you look at the image its just off right bottom). Could this be dinner for tonight for the birds?)
I should have said bottom left bottom instead of right bottom.
Hi Kishore - Nick M changed the view since not much happens on the right side of the nest until the chicks grow up and there's more to be seen up top now the lens is clean..makes sense doesn't it?
Re. camera locations - the ex-poo (ex-feather) cam is well above the nest, looking along the top of the three 'gargoyles' where the off- duty bird perches.
The two nest cams are down below attached to the sides of the nest platform. We'll put up a photo which shows their locations soon.
Finally: it's unlikely to be a mammal. Only once in three years have we seen a mammal (a rat) being brought in. Their food is 99.9% birds.
Nick B (DWT)
pax Canada 10.31am
What a nice surprise to log on this morning and see the clear pudding cam. there was one of the falcons in all her/his glory.
Well done Nick M.
btw. I remember that one rodent, we were so surprised to see it there.
On the bottom-left of the newly-cleaned camera lens there seems to be two house sparrows hopping around apparently quite unconcerned about the peregrine sitting there at the moment!
Oh, please please put back the multi view? That way we can see the birds ready to swap positions as we did today. I can’t remember what time it happened today, but its normally the female returning that perches on the scruffy side and eventually the male gets the message. Fascinating to watch both views with both birds looking at each other. And then to have the third view of what’s going on up above. I’ve a feeling, and I know this is churlish, but the camera angle is ever so slightly higher than before? It looks like some of the (interesting) feeding foreground has now gone? Still, great to have that view back – and I have won a small wager on the fact that it was feathers not poo
It's terribly hard to please everyone, so it's probably best if we swap over the cameras feeds from time to time during the quiet incubation period.
There is some serious research here that webcam viewers can help with: If, during complete darkness, you see that a peregrine has sallied forth and then a few minutes later brought back a fresh-looking prey item to the top of the tower, do please tell us. We want to capture film footage of these events for those that study urban peregrines. (local time is shown at the top of each video feed.)
Just to explain: Yes, our camera was obscured by feathers, not poo. It was my fault; I had stuck PVC insulating tape over some of the infr-red LEDs to cut down on the flare we were getting from the camera. The trick worked, but some exposed bits of tape then trapped some small feathers, so obscuring the lens. I trimmed the tape this lunchtime and hope it won't happen again.
I would welcome suggestions as to what I could use in place of tape to mask part of the acrylic lens cover. Perhaps I need a thick paint to block the IR light, but would need to be able to remove it again easily without dissolving what I think is an acrylic rather than a glass front to the lens.
Thanks Nick M for removing the feathers and make the lens clear. Having been up to top of the Cathedral Tower, I can imagine how much work you've done to clean it up.
Thanks and have a Happy Easter !
Jennie, Hong Kong.
pax Canada 12.08am
wonderful shot of falcon with prey on the pudding cam
Yes, the male is plucking a prey item (and making me late for work!)
The lens is beautifully clean now, as Nick explained in an earlier entry.
Video:
Glad you like the film, Sue. Perhaps I should change jobs and start work as a professional cameraman instead!
PayPal:
We would love to accept donations by PayPal. I did ask for permission from my City Council to do this a year ago. But there are a range of issues involved that they've not faced before, and it hasn't been resolved yet. We do have a new official IT support company starting this month. They are likely to be able to offer a secure money transfer facility, but it may not be one that is well-known like PayPal.
Because we're a partnership between a charity, a church and a council, we do have to be seen to be acting appropriately. For example, I don't think I could offer my personal PayPal acount for transactions because it would expose us to accusations of inappropriate accounting procedure. But we are working on it.
Froona:
Thanks to everyone for your lovely comments, which I've copied them to Schlechtvalkan Forum. I will also make a separate line of acknowledgements on our homepage for donations in memory of Froona.
Birmingham Peregrines:
I heard two days ago that the eggs laid at Fort Dulop have been predated by gulls after being abandoned.
Nick M.
(this is a repost of an earlier comment which contained a few typos - thanks Roger L.)
11:51 camera time.
Just watched a very swift changeover. Tiercel arrived and the falcon immediately gave up her position, incubating. She then flew straight up the tower where she's now busy preening herself & presumably enjoying a break.
Q: I haven't seen the tiercel dropping food to her on the scrape, so presumably he's dropping it off in the 'cache' for her - ?
Drove past the Fort Dunlop building this morning and felt a bit sad. No evidence of the nest platform but it is a very big building. Got home to find a lovely clear picture on the pudding cam - much better!
hiya guys i was just wondering when we are to expect our eggs to hatch ????
jo in alfreton
Hi Jo
The question's been asked, and answered before. In short, hatching is expected around the end of April. You can find lots of info if you look at "Key Links" on the top left corner of the diary page then click on "Peregrine Project Homepage". In one of the diaries, some time ago, there was a beautiful little table drawn up but I can't recall where. However, if you look at the diary entry "A Full Clutch" (and you should be able to see this in the "Archive" links down the left hand side - pardon me if I have this wrong) Nick B has entered full information.
I have just noted with horror that we've slipped from 18th to 19th in "top birding sites" - but that's still pretty good worldwide!
pax Canada 1.35pm
falcon on the pudding cam
thanks sue i found the info it was where you said it was will be on the look out around the end of the month
jo
If you feel like a brief change from peregrines (very unlikely), have a look at www.thewebbroadcastingcorporation.com and click on the osprey. The old girl has just laid her 53rd egg in the nest.
I have added further notes and a url to the end of our blog entry relating to Froona. Thank you, again, for all your comments and indeed donations, some of which have been specifically left in memory of our friend.
Derby City Council's webservices are undergoing drastic changes over Easter as our networks are moved over to a new IT support company. Our thanks to Capita and its staff for all their support for our project these last two years. We've been assured that our live feed won't be affected, but already our webpages have lost all their images. Don't be alarmed by this - it was expected. I will update our project homepage with details of all our donations, but I'm afraid I can't do this until all our IT changes have been made.
Someone asked about food being passed to the female on the nest. As far as I can remember, I've never seen this happen, except as a pre-courtship ritual. She always leaves the nest and flies off somewhere else to feed, such as the top of the tower.
I'm experiencing time out on the webcam url. Is anybody else having the same problem. Time 08:17 - I have been trying for the last 15 mins - no joy. :(
Not just you Kishore we can't get it either.
I think I found the culprit - the maintenance guys are on the server at Derby Council. From what I found its likely to be down over the Easter period :(
I hope I'm wrong.
I think Nick already explained that there's going to be lots of downtime over the easter break while Derby's IT gets some essential works done. It's disappointing for us peregrine watchers but Easter is the obvious time to do work because Derby uses its IT for a lot more than us and they have to do the work when it's going to cause the least disruption to the work of running the city (I imagine). I'll miss you - but shall go off and look for something else "in the flesh" - a trip to London's Tate Modern is on the cards, I think. See you after Easter! Have a good Easter Mr and Mrs peregrine and fellow watchers.
My wife and I were just logging on for this years peregrine watching and were very shocked and saddened to read about Froona. Her input and watchfulness were invaluable last year. She struck us as full of life and enthusiasm. Our thoughts are with her many friends and family. She will be sorely missed.
Welcome back - it's nice to be able to see our peregrines again and know they are doing well. Can't wait for the eggs to hatch now.
Nick, it was good to talk to you earlier on today. We're in South Wales but are hoping to move back to Derby in the near future when I hope to be able to help out with the project.
Best wishes.
Mary Tong
not wanting to appear daft, but I have only viewed the 'nest' via 2 cameras ;left and right- nest shot and multi view. How do you view from a 3rd camera please.
take a look at this other nest site in birmingham and see the squatters in the nest platform
http://www.bbc.net.uk/birmingham/content/webcams/peregrine_falcon_live_webcam.shtml
alan
about the cameras,
i think the multi view shot is the one with all three cameras on it.
they are the only shots i have available as well.
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