These intimate moments were captured from our video recorders, thanks to the watchfulness of webcam viewers who left reports (from as far afield as Shanghai in China, to Swadlincote in Derbyshire) that the peregrines had been seen mating on the tower again, mostly on 16th March. It seems almost prurient to intrude in this way, but what a wonderful opportunity to to see these magnificent birds come together on Derby Cathedral's tower at the start of this year's nesting season.
Notice the male set off from the overhanging guttering at the beginning of the first clip. He obviously makes a short approach flight over Cathedral Green before coming back into view again. The second video contains a small error, whereby an additional clip from a few days earlier was accidentally included at the start of the recording, hence the apparent jump.
25 comments:
Cameras frozen since 03:56.
Roger.
pax Canada
mating at 18.08 your time I think
Sorry for the break in service today. The Axis video server inside Derby Cathedral has now been remotely rebooted and all seems OK. Ironically I was away from my office, giving a short presentation on our Peregrine Project at a meeting of museum people looking into so-called "Web 2.0" technology. (Blogs, YouTube and other social media stuff). So I knew the camera feed had frozen but could do nothing about it.
Great to hear that within half an hour of their return there may have been more mating moments seen. How kind of the peregrines to wait!
Great clips. Glad to see the webcams back online again :)
Great to see these videos. Is one of the cameras down? I only appear to be able to get two and not the 3 camera view. I must admit I prefer these individual cameras.
It looks like the hen is preparing the nest ready for laying
It was great last year when we had the live streming footage with sound. Will this be happening again and if so when.
The other nest camera is not down - we thought it would be good for everyone to be able to see the tower camera in greater detail whilst there's lots of mating activity going on. We do have to raise funds to pay for each webcam page, so we try to swap around the three cameras on the two pages, according to what activity is most likely to be of interest.
Hi, will we be able to watch the live stream again this year?
Speaking of which, maybe this would be a good time to remind people how they can donate to the project, including donations from overseas...
p.s. I can't remember if you folks are set up to take credit cards or paypal?
The live stream was not successful last year because of the equipment generously donated by our Council's IT support company. It continuously froze and had to be rebooted, leaving us unable to utilise the very kind support from Media on Demand to host the live a/v stream we were trying to send them. We are very grateful to them, and apologise to everyone who found the video stream frustrating. We may look into alternative ways of getting live pictures out, but we are underging some internal changes in our IT support at present, which makes it an awkward time to ask for extra help for non-essential services.
I was just wondering what I was looking at in the right hand camera at 15:57 today (19th March) ?
There was a perigrine in the left hand camera at the same time, so I presume it is another one carrying something that doesn't look much like a meal.
Just logged on and wondering if she might be getting ready to lay?
Great viewing this morning. I think she definately looks like she is getting ready to lay. I don't think I will get much work done today - I shall be too busy watching.
what time is service on sunday?
It certainly looked like we were going to see an egg laid today - we even had a call from urban peregrine expert, Nick Dixon, suggesting this might happen. But the birds tricked us with a false alarm, and my guess is that it'll probably be sometime next week.
(The previous comment has been removed to avoid problems for the project team, so I'd love to hear from Fran - perhaps you'd email me directly at peregrines@derby.gov.uk for a chat please)
In answer to Anonymous regarding Service times at the Cathedral.
The main Service on Sunday is at 10.45am. This is a sung Eucharist and finishes around 12.00noon. There is also Choral Evensong at 6.00pm.
We will be running Tower Open days again this year - a chance to climb the famous tower and even see the equipment we use to operate the webcams!! I will publish the dates as soon as they are finalised.
Great news that the cathedral tower will be open again this year - please publicise the dates asap as I will make every effort to attend. Karen Anne's reminder about donations was a good one too. I don't know what sort of awkward times Nick (Museum) hints at, but I would guess it's financial due to the turbulent financial times we are all experiencing (we have difficult issues in Bucks too with hard decisions to be taken on the budget) I'm sure most of us regular viewers would be only too eager to donate to do all we can to keep this great project going. We'd be devasted if anything happened due to a shortage of funds.
Time 15.30
I think Mrs. Peregrine is seriously thinking of laying an egg very soon - it must be the spring weather we're having here in Derbyshire!
Anna, Ripley
Great videoclips of matings! Excellent! Thanks so much for sharing.
Last year the first egg was on March 28, perhaps a bit sooner this year?
Froona
Having been an avid fan of this project for a year or so, I finally got around to buying the DVD this week. It's beautiful.
Glad to see that you are at last getting the publicity you deserve, after all your hard work:
BBC News story
Terry, Herts
Hi Terry: yes our recent press release resulted in a decent piece in the local paper (except they kept calling everyone 'twitchers'!)and an interview on BBC Radio Derby...all grist to the mill.
On the 'how to send donations' front, the easiest way is to phone 01773 881188, the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust office, in office hours (9 - 5pm weekdays) and the admin. team there can take a donation from you via your debit/credit card.
For overseas donations it is more complex but again, the staff can explain what you need to do.
Nick B (DWT)
Lots of activity on the nest scrape from 08:25 - 08:40.It really does look like Mum wants to give us all a Mothers day present!
Paulew
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