Roof matters (part 3) and an Update

UPDATE 23rd February: the nave roof is now completely shrouded in its white plastic cover. So the workmen below the nest, who'll be there for the next five months replacing the old lead roof, will now be invisible to our peregrines on their nest platform above.
For anyone not looking at the comments to this blog we advise you to do so, since the excellent Wendy Bartter is making lots of video clips of our birds when they appear on the nest and posting them on You Tube. The links to each video is in her comments.
Three of her clips are embedded below,  but many more really interesting ones can be found in her comments. Just click on the  'comments' button at the foot of each blog post.

Work is proceeding apace to cover over Derby Cathedral's nave roof. The specialist scaffolders, (Tamworth Scaffolding) appear to be well ahead of schedule, which is great news.

We've been keeping an eye on progress and hoping their activities below the peregrines' nest platform would not put them off from breeding again this year. As the video below shows only too well, this is clearly not an issue. Watch this speeded up video from Feb 17th, showing strips of the weatherproof covering starting to be hauled into position like some giant roller-blind. At 1 min 20 sec our falcon flies in and looks down on the workers below. She stays for over 50 minutes whilst a number of people are walking about below, and is clearly quite relaxed about their presence.The same thing happens again later that afternoon.





Another sequence, also brilliantly captured by webcam watcher Wendy Bartter, shows clearly that courtship on the nest is still going well. At 2am on Feb 18th,  Wendy captured this sequence of 'ee-chupping'. The smaller tiercel (male) flies in first, and moves over to the nest scrape. At 2 min 30 sec the larger falcon (female) flies in from where they ee-chupp away to one another. At 3 min 30 sec into the clip he then flies off, leaving her alone on the platform.






We've finally managed to repair our damaged internet aerial cable and have managed to recrimp a couple of brand new specialised RP-TNC plugs onto our thick, LMR400 high frequency cable.
So, it's now ready for it being relocated on the outer edge of all the scaffolding, although we've just learnt that we will probably have to permanently relocate it within the tower itself. Whether we can beam our signals out through the fine leaded glass windows in the Clock Room where our control equipment is now located remains to be seen. But it's inevitable that our camera feeds will go down for a brief period whilst the builders try to rig up a suitable alternative location. So once again, do bear with is. Normal service will, as always, be resumed as soon as possible!