So, egg-sighted!

A delightful surprise awaited us this morning when we turned on the monitor in the cathedral tower - we have our first egg! It was laid at 5.46am on Tuesday 3rd April, and was captured on film under infrared illumination. We will be working hard over the next couple of evenings to try and bring you some video clips. Meanwhile the moment of egg laying was shown on Wednesday evening on BBC TV's "East Midlands Today", and you can watch the news clip here.

Obviously everyone involved in the project is really excited, and we're hoping it won't be the only one. (No further egg was seen when we check again on Thursday)

Just before laying, she stood absolutely still in the nest scrape for a full 40 minutes, before slowly turning round just once, after which we got our first glimpse of the egg. By daybreak we saw the egg in its full colour, a beautiful dark, rich red/brown. They both seemed so proud - as are we! The most usual clutch size in peregrines is four. The eggs are reddish-brown and are laid at intervals of about two days. Only when the clutch is complete will the female (the falcon) begin incubation. The male will then do all the hunting, providing her with food. She will leave the eggs to feed and the male will take over incubation while she does. However, when she's ready, she soon returns and ousts the male from the eggs.

We're really sorry (and not a little frustrated) that we still can't bring you live webcam pictures, but this doesn't seem too far away now. We're assured by Capita, who are Derby Council's IT consultants, that they can get our first image stream out to you by Monday 16th April, if not before. The wireless internet connection is nearly complete, and it's then just the job of configuring our video server to send out the pictures. Whether the first images you get to see are static pictures or a video stream depends on how easily Capita find it to send stuff out from behind our firewall.