Ringing Day

I'm not sure who was more scared this evening - me or the three feisty young peregrine chicks that had to go through the ignominious experience of being taken from their nests, popped into a bag, lowered to the ground and having rings put on their legs.

I think it was me!

The responsibility of not hurting, not injuring, not scaring, and definitely not dropping any of our three young birds had been preying on me for much of the afternoon.

Ant Messenger ringing one of our new chicks
inside the Cathedral Tower. photo: Helen Naylor

Back on the nest ledge. Slightly indignant maybe?

We were much later in starting than we had intended. Derby traffic had help up Ant, our licensed ringer. But once inside the cathedral we were still unsure whether we should proceed with the abseil and ringing, or not.. The falcon had been sheltering her chicks from the afternoon's heavy rain and was, herself, quite bedraggled. The rain had only just eased off, although  it seemed quite calm at ground level.

However, we took our small assembled audience up to the top of the tower where we assessed the conditions from the roof. The wind blew firmly from the east - straight at the nest and, worryingly, experience had shown us just how easily our ropes could get blown round the corner of the tower and get snagged on the intricate stonework, making them incredibly hard to retrieve. We decided to tie an empty rucksack to the two ropes and lower it down to see how badly it got blown about. It went down fine - the falcon standing on the side of the nest, wondering what was going on, obviously reluctant to leave her chicks. With the rain looking some way off we decided to give it a go. Everyone piled down the tower stairs, leaving just me and Nicole, one of the Rolls Royce apprentices who had been working with our project recently. Nicole had revealed she was a climber, so I asked her to run through the safety checks with me prior to the abseil. We both agreed it was always the first few steps over the edge that made us both nervous. I had my own survival as well as that of the chicks to make me doubly nervous.

Once down at the nest I found the wind was a lot less noticeable. I locked myself off on the rope, and listened to the calls of the falcon who by now had obviously left the nest and was flying noisily around the tower. The chicks were also hissing at me in alarm, cowered in the corner of the nest platform. Then came the even more terrifying bit - picking up each bird and carefully putting each one inside a padded rucksack. Mindful of concerns from a falconer friend who had expressed concern about developing wing feathers being damaged by careless handling, I did the best I could to pick each one up and pop it inside. Disentangling needle-sharp talons embedded in my gloves was necessary before the next one could captured. The precious cargo was lowered as gently as possible to the nave roof where Ant Messenger was ready to bring them inside for the really skilled bit - the ringing.  Each bird gets two metal rings - one bright orange, bearing a three digit number

Say 'cheese' everyone

While the ringing was going on down below, watched by our invited audience, I had a very literal sense of hanging about doing nothing. So the lenses got a good clean, a few squidgy pellets and other bits were bagged up, and then I remembered that the two microphones were both on, and the camera was pretty wide angle, and also that many of you were probably watching. I know some of you heard me telling you to 'say cheese', so just so you know what you looked like to me, shown above is the now rather pecked at camera that gives us such an amazing view out from the back of the nest platform. Attempts to take a selfie failed dismally, and posed a real danger to Ant down below had he popped his head out onto the roof at the same time as I had let go of the cameraphone.

Is this the worst selfie ever?

As you can see from the top photos, the three chicks were soon returned, unharmed to the nest, bearing their nice bright bling. A few moments of holding them gently in place with a hand over their back and wings seemed to calm them down -  it did me, anyway. The worst over, it was then just a job of unlocking the ropes and lowering myself to the ground. Well - to a very wet, slippery nave roof actually. It was also then that a gust of wind managed to blow both ropes round the side of the tower which took a bit of time and some careful balancing on the apex of the roof before they were retrieved and loaded down with a weight again.

A chick's-eye view from the Derby Cathedral nest ledge.

Not surprisingly, by the time all this was over, a number of our visitors had left, but we hope they enjoyed the experience, despite the long wait at the start. We then had to climb back up to the top in order to retrieve the abseil ropes and clear up our gear. Our sincere thanks to Matt the verger who very patiently waited behind after Evensong had finished and who kindly locked up after us.

Ant, our ringer, has suggested that this year we have two males and a female. More on which is which, and what ring number they each have later on in the week.


Nick Moyes
Technical Advisor