Cathedral Cafe window display

Yesterday I took time out from preparing for the launch of my new book on The Flora of Derbyshire to pop down to the Cathedral to reinstall our peregrine display.

Window display in Derby Cathedral's cafe on Irongate.

The window display in the Cathedral Centre cafe opposite the cathedral was designed and constructed with financial support from the Heritage Lottery Fund and is based on a life-sized reconstruction of the real peregrine nest ledge, and includes a live link to one of our nest webcams. This monitor can be viewed by passers by on Irongate (though the view is best if  the early morning sun's not shining on the window).

The main focus of the cafe display was to highlight to visitors the fact that there are not only peregrine faces to be seen on the mediaeval tower of Derby's cathedral, but many others too. In fact, there are 26 carved stone faces in one form or another on the tower. For example, there is the intricate  face of the 'green man' with vegetation sprouting from his nostrils which most visitors probably never notice, despite two of them being at eye-level as they walk in the main west entrance. There are also smaller green faces and tiny human figures half way up the tower, except on the east face.

Green man beside the west entrance to Derby Cathedral.

Then towards the top of the tower, of course, we have the large stone grotesques that for over four centuries have stared down at us mere mortals with their beastly, cold faces (the stone figures, not the mortals). Actually, I rather like these eleven grotesques, apart from the times when I have to abseil off the tower and end up treading on some rather unpleasant and slippery avian remains as I climb over the parapet.
Clearly however our peregrines like them, especially as they form a great perch on which to feed or roost. You can see them using these perches in our tower cam view, which is on the recently re-activated Stream 3.

One of the carved 'grotesque' figures on top of the tower

Our best nest views are now either the live audio-video feed of Stream 4, or the equivalent images which change every six seconds or so in Stream 1. It's this latter stream that we normally use to drive the Cathedral Cafe window.  Unfortunately right now there's a bit of a problem with the cathedral's own WiFi connection, so until they get that fixed the window monitor itself will not be turned on - possibly later next week. Let's hope it's in time for when the chicks start to hatch out. And that's really is not all that far off now!
Meanwhile Ian Layton our People and Peregrines Engagement Officer is gearing up for the start of the new season and organising watchpoints, whilst I've been working on producing a new visitor leaflet for Derby Cathedral, looking at the many faces found on its ancient tower. Nick Brown is keeping us all in order and  drives us along, really helping out as a lead volunteer in so many ways that we don't know what we'd do without him. Meanwhile Jane and Kaite back at Derbyshire Wildlife Trust's HQ in Belper are doing a great job with the finances and promotion of our project - like our new Donations Page which a number of you have kindly contributed to in recent weeks.

Here's to seeing the new chicks very soon!

Nick Moyes
Peregrine Project Technical Advisor
Ps There may be a short interruption to web cam transmission on the morning of Friday 1st May. If so, it should last no longer than 30 minutes and hopefully much shorter. So don't panic, normal service will be resumed asap.