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| Falcon on chicks and eggs - male wanting to take over |
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| Close-up of Derby's falcon on day-old chicks and eggs |
By Saturday evening we had two newly hatched peregrine chicks, with a third having arrived on Sunday morning.
Here are some pictures, many screen-grabbed from people's computers and posted to our Flickr Group. (Most recent first)
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| Three day-old chicks being fed (with one egg still unhatched) |
Pipped egg - suggesting fairly imminent hatching
71 comments:
Three being fed, great camera zooming in! I've posted a grab to flickr.
RJ
Thanks for showing the screengrabs.
One more left to hatch, I wonder if it will be today?
I see the tiercel is on the scrape again and the falcon is fidgeting and looking underneath herself. Could this be a hatching?
Hello Nick & Nick, yet another question! Do you compile any statistics about feeding frequency or feeding duration against time after hatching? or maybe peak feeding times of day? With so many avid viewers it might be possible to generate a shared log!
Aww think I just missed a feed!
Ah it was a changeover not a feed. The tiercel is now on the clutch.
There is more shell towards the back of the scrape, and the tiercel is on the clutch.
The falcon is back and sitting on the ledge, the tiecel hasn't moved off the clutch yet. The tiercel just left and the falcon is still on the ledge right-hand side. The last egg still there. One of the adults has just covered the clutch wings very widely spread, it's the falcon I think. pic on flickr.
I have been watching all weekend and I am so excited about the chicks hatching! I saw them being fed
Well done, Thomas. Thanks for letting us know how excited you were to see the chicks hatching.
Can you imagine being born, growing up and leaving home in just six weeks? By July you would be waving goodbye to Mum and Dad and setting off for a new life on your own! This is what our peregrines are going to be doing. So do keep watching and telling everyone what you see.
Hi is there going to be Peregrine watches this year if so wen r they starting?
Hi Anon: yes there will be a series of Watch Points on Cathedral Green beginning on Wednesday 16th May, roughly 11am to 1.30pm, weather dependent as usual of course.
They will be every Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday then until the end of June (at least).
Also there'll be a special 'open' day on Bank Holiday Tuesday 5th June....more details on all these will be posted a bit nearer the time.
Nick B (DWT)
Hi REJ (AT): we hope to be able to do some more scientific work on things like feeding times such as you suggest either later this summer or (certainly) next year.
More on this when we announce the 'good news' since it is linked.....
For the time being though, with both Nicks purely voluntary and with other commitments too, it hasn't been possible to collect or analyse this sort of data as yet.
Nick B (DWT)
Chicks are waiting for a feed.
Just seen 3 chicks and 1 egg.
Thank-you for info nick from Christine and cliff. Been watching all the activity of the last few days. From chritine.
The brood has only been fed once - just before mid-day, maybe that is enough and normal for such small chicks, but is our Mr P a bit lazy? He likes to sit about a lot, and the falcon has left twice for very short periods - maybe to see what is in the larder, and returned without anything.
I know that when a chick hatches it usually has enough food in its belly for the first 24 hours. This pair usually have enough food stored, but I agree only one feed does not seem enough.
Yes falcon has just left the chicks and came back very quickly, she looks like she could be feeding them but has her back to the camera. The tiercel is also on the right-hand side of the scrape, he probably brought some food. Yes I think she is feeding them.
Late supper in the Peregrine household. Time those babies were in bed!
Tiercel just landed on the ledge, falcon came off the chicks, egg still intact. It looks like some food in the front corner of right side scrape, I think the tiercel left it just.
I have set 15 min intervals for screen grabs overnight. Hoping to see egg shell and another chick. I see someone zoomed in a momant ago, Goodnight.
Goodnight Phoebe. 'twas I.
I just wanted to ensure the images were in focus all night. There is a shift in focus from daylight to infra-red which sometimes leaves our pictures fuzzy. A slight tweak usually sets it right.
See you all tomorrow.
PS Interested to know which screen capture programme you're using. Irfanview?
So they had a midnight feast and are now getting an early breakfast. My appologies to Mr. P. He is efficient and not lazy after all.
Nick M, as I thought, the focus was better. Yes I use Irfanview, it's neat little program easy to use and I find it very reliable, especially for a freebie!
I saw both birds as if to changeover at 02:30am.
Still an egg at 04:00 but not sure, pic on flickr
Possibly a feed at 05:45am again back to the camera.
Chicks are being fed. Still an egg intact.
Second breakfast arrived 09:15, and the falcon was kind enough to stand sideways so that we could see the chicks get fed. Pics on Flikr.
It seems increasingly likely now that the fourth egg may not hatch, given the interval that has now elapsed. maybe it is infertile or that it was chilled in all that rain and cold.
nick B (DWT)
Tiercel is on the clutch and the falcon is on the tower cam tail visible.
watched the chicks being fed at about 9.20, they are so cute!the last egg still hasnt hatched
Great to check in and see such fabulous pictures on the blog of the chicks being fed as well as the shot from the ground of the peregrine leaving the nest platform. That shot helps put the screen grabs into context but also shows once again how magnificent the birds look against Derby Cathedral. More great grabs on Flickr - thank you everyone!
Nick M, it is incredible that the birds can be as tiny as those in Derby just now and yet be airborne in 6 weeks' time. I always find the development of the feathers fascinating. Nick B, exciting news about the Watch points and Open Day too!
Following on Nick B's comments. I should say that anyone that wanted to could easily set up a screen capture programme at 15 second intervals, then review the saved image files as thumbnails. This would give frequency and duration of feeds. I would recommend using Irfanview for this task.
However, as Nick B said, he and I are fully engaged in other aspects of the project. We would support anyone who wanted to monitor and record these details - it would be immensely interesting, but we don't have the time to do it ourselves.
It would be great to enlist a "Peregrine Champion" interested in following this line of enquiry over the next six weeks. And we'd do our best to assist.
I have just set up a spreadsheet to log an account of all feeds that I see and how many chicks/eggs. A 10 minute interval would be more suitable for captures. Also someone usually posts to flicr when a feed is seen.
I do hope the last egg hatches.
Just had a quick glimpse under the falcon and the egg still looks intact.
The children will be so excited to learn that 3 eggs have hatched. Some do log on at home so they may be bursting to give me the news tomorrow. Will let you know what they say.
We have a link with our local Special School and the 3 pupils who come each Friday were excited to chat about the eggs. They haven't been in for a few weeks so this was the first opportunity to show them the scrape. Their teacher is finding out if they can follow progress back in class.
Thank you to the person who told me how to post my messages. Admit am a duffer on such things!
The children will be so excited to learn that 3 eggs have hatched. Some do log on at home so they may be bursting to give me the news tomorrow. Will let you know what they say.
We have a link with our local Special School and the 3 pupils who come each Friday were excited to chat about the eggs. They haven't been in for a few weeks so this was the first opportunity to show them the scrape. Their teacher is finding out if they can follow progress back in class.
Thank you to the person who told me how to post my messages. Admit am a duffer on such things!
@ Phoebe - I am glad to hear you like the logging idea also! Just for fun and ease of data entry - I have set up an input form that sends data to a shared spreadsheet. Look on my Blog Page & feel free to send a few entries. Perhaps we can develop the idea together? Including any others who want to contribute. I can share my email address with you via Flickr if you like.
@ Nicks B&M - perhaps you can advise on what data would be of interest?
I think it's still the tiercel on the clutch, and the falcon just landed on the tower cam - tail visible but I just saw what looked like a feather floating along from the tower cam, so maybe food is being prepared, the tiercel on the scrape keeps looking upward.
Feed time
The egg is in full view.
It looks like the pair have swapped roles. The tiercel is back on the eggs after a feed.
@ REJ I had a look at the log you set up and I like it :)
@Phoebe - If you would like to use the form to post details of that last feed you saw, we can start filling in the times until we arrive at a better model. I am thinking it should be a new shared Gmail account rather than on my private one. (I willlook both ways before crossing the road in the meantime). :)
OK Rej, I just logged that latedst feed on your feeding log! So easy to do. Thanks will wait to hear from you regarding a Gmail account. :)
The tiecel just landed on the right side of the scrape, the falcon soon came off the clutch, the egg still looks intact. The tiercel has taken over brooding. It is soon time for a feed, maybe he has filled the larder and the falcon has gone to fetch the food in.
Food brought in my the falcon, feeding starts.
A very short feed a moment ago by the falcon who brought the food to the scrape - pic on flickr. The tiercel, I think, is back on the clutch and the falcon just came back and took away the food stored in the right side of the scrape.
Just caught the end of another feed – still just the three. It does look like that fourth may not happen, but with the strange (early) incubation way back at the start, you never know. Phoebe/Rej – with stats so far, I was wondering what the average gap between feeds was, do you have that?
RJ
Rej/Phoebe
You sound like you're getting sorted.
I suggest there are three things worth trying to record throughout one breeding season.
In order of importance that would be:
1) Times and therefore intervals between feeds.
2) Duration of feeds
3) Gender of adult feeding the chicks
4) No. of chicks fed at each feed.
5) Time period during which chicks are left unattended
1&2 should be easiest to collect. I still recommend a capture speed of around 15 seconds. Four captures a minute should provide enough time-stamped images to give you the duration of a feed. Any further and you may miss detail - but it's up to you, of course.
If hard disk space is an issue, you can set max file size to 100kb in the Options menu in Irfanview and still get a good resolution image.
Let me know how you get on.
Glimpse of 4th egg, still intact.
Feed time, tiercel on right side falcon feeding chicks, egg still there.
The fourth egg looks pipped.
Just seen a feed – it looked very like that 4th egg was pipped. I’ve added to flickr.
RJ
And flickr has two others who thought the same about that 4th being pipped – they er.. pipped me to the upload!
RJ
Changeover at 18.32hrs, but I couldn't count the chicks & it was over too quickly for me to spot if there was still an egg.
@ Nick M, I agree 15 second captures to determine a feed length, I thought you meant for hours lol
@Phoebe
I did mean every 15 seconds, throughout the day. It's simple to set up, and to results in just 240 images per hour (I set mine at twice that rate: 8 every 8 seconds)
Of course, I don't view every image one at a time - I view them in Thumbnail form, and look for sudden changes in activity. It's very easy to spot, but unfortunately not something I can add to my existing workload at present.
But if you can do it that way, you'll get a lot of easy-to-access data on how the peregrines behave as the chicks progress.
Nick M.
@RJ - take a look at my Blogger account via Rej (AT) link. You can see all collected data so far.
Phoebe and I are testing the idea before we move it to a more suitable home, add some security, and find a nice way to display results
Feel free to try the data load form, any duplicates can be merged later. Thrice is better than missed!
@Nick M - we had most of your fields in the plan, but not time left alone - I wonder if that would be better in a dedicated table? I will make an "Aunt Sally"
Is that new eggshell pieces? There's always one late for the party
Hi Nick M, I see what you mean. Last year I set it to 6 seconds to coincide with the camera delay.
I can do that.
The falcon was very fidgety just now, maybe that egg is a rockin' an a rollin' beneath her, finger crossed we may have another chick by daybreak!
Difficult to cross one finger, I meant 'fingers' hehe
Ok, here’s a hypothesis. Several of us saw what looked like the 4th egg had pipped at the feed around 6.30 pm Monday. Was it that we’d seen it from a different angle for the first time – and that the chick had failed to break through? Or was it actually happening. I’ve checked back at the pics on flickr, and although it’s not very easy to tell, I think that the egg that was definitely paler than the others was #3, and that was the hatch #3. Could it be that the 4th that we can see is actually the 4th, has pipped and will hatch? I, and I think the Nicks, had noticed that incubation was pretty much full on between #2 & #3, which would mean that the hatch time between #3 & #4 would (unusually) be almost be the time difference between their laying – 63.5 hours! So we actually (mathematically) still have a chance of a 4th. Nature has proved me wrong so many times, but, heck, here’s hoping..
RJ
@RJ I certainly wouldn't dismiss the chance of our 4th egg hatching.quite yet.
Nick M.
This morning I see that egg 4 looks pipped but the falcon is not sitting on it. It seems to have failed to hatch.
It's hatched! 03:58 the shell is out, pic on flickr very soon.
Definitely FOUR chicks now!
6.23 mum left the nest for a moment but did not return with food. She looked like she had been alert for a minute or 2 possibly someone got a little too close. CM
Number 4 it is...... well done Mr and Mrs P.... Tuesday 6.25 egg shell on view and breakfast time for 4.... Mo x
I cant believe it! the 4th egg has hatched! Im very happy!
so what I saw was a half shell, carefully arranged to look like an unhatched egg!
@RJ these are the rough feeding durations and gaps between feeds so far.
Duration Gap Hr:Min
0:10
0:13 18:00
0:07 10:55
0:15 8:15
0:11 5:05
0:05 3:16
0:07 2:34
0:03 10:24
0:07 3:14
The feeds are between 2 and 3.5 hours apart. Next one due about 11:10am.
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