First chick

(Update 10th May: As of this morning we have three new peregrine chicks, with one egg still unhatched)

Whilst many other pairs of  peregrines around the country have already hatched their eggs, Derby's always seem later than most. At 11am today there was an obvious hole (pip) in the shell of  one egg, and we could hear faint squealing coming from the young bird inside.

An hour  later we had our first glimpse of this new life as our female left the nest and the tiercel (male) took over. Once again, we thank Wendy Bartter for capturing these super videos from our webcams.



Because peregrines don't incubate their eggs in earnest until the whole clutch is laid, this means they all develop at about the same speed. So, with luck, we should see further chick hatching very soon. Our male (who was new last year) is clearly doing his job well.  Within 90 minutes he was bringing food to the platform, although the falcon was not showing much interest in feeding them at such an early stage.

One commenter asked whether the noises made by the male today are normal, and they certainly are - almost a 'here I am' sort of chirrup, rather than the stronger contact/courtship calls we heard in previous weeks. Once again, it's great that local schoolchildren have been encouraged to watch our webcameras. The primary school children from Green Class were clearly excited today to  see the wet chick revealed, and how quickly it soon dried out and fluffed up, and we thank them for leaving a comment on our blog.