Scraping into February

Over the last few weeks we've been seeing our adult peregrines spending more time together, and certainly more time nearer to their nest site half way up the tower of Derby Cathedral.

A view of Jury's Inn from the traffic lights by
Queen Street in Derby. 

On many occasions in recent days I've had to stop at traffic lights by Queen Street on Derby's inner ring road. There it's possible (if not driving!)  to look up and see either one or both peregrine falcons atop the huge blue 'Jury's Inn' lettering advertising the hotel's name. From there the birds have a clear view of their nest site, as well as the ability to bask in the warm sunshine from the south.

With courtship displays and heightened nest activity nearly upon us, the Project Team have turn on 'movement detection' on our wide angle nest camera. This can be set to look at different areas of the field of view and to automatically save a short video to a memory card within the camera. This can then be remotely downloaded and checked for interesting happenings. It can be a slow process to check them all, but sometimes  it yields interesting events, like this one just as the bells were ringing at 4pm this afternoon. This really gives you an idea of how the nest scrape gets its name.

We shall be seeing a lot more of this kind of preparatory action over the next few weeks. If you spot something you think we ought to see, do please help us by noting the exact time stamp on the webcam screen and leaving a comment on this blog. We can then do our best to check whether the moment you saw has been captured, and to share it for all to see.