Yesterday (after returning from holiday and finally wresting my laptop off my daughter who'd been using it for her GCSE exam revision for the last few days!) I managed to call in at Derby Cathedral to check out our cameras. The good news is, we definitely have a full clutch of four eggs, and expect these to hatch out in the first week of May.
Nowadays, a laptop is needed because modern 'IP cameras' can't be viewed directly from a TV monitor, like our old cameras used to be. But what they can do is deploy 'movement detection', which automatically records a short clip of whatever is happening on the nest platform directly to a built in SD card. Most often it's just a bit of shuffling around on the nest scrape, which isn't very interesting to watch. But, by wading through the recordings, we can unearth gems recorded over the last few days or weeks, like the one below. Here we see the female peregrine falcon being relieved by the smaller male (known as a tiercel) from her main duties of incubation. It confirmed that, just as in every year since 2007, we have had a clutch of four eggs laid at Derby.
The clip above was actually created by uploading two separate, higher quality video clips to YouTube, which had been automatically recorded moments apart. It's no longer possible to merge clips together on YouTube itself, so for a 'quick fix' I used a free online merging tool at www.clideo.com. If you'd like to view the much higher resolution HD versions separately, see here and then here.
Whilst we do still have an old analogue video recorder inside the cathedral's tower, it can only connect to our one remaining analogue camera, which nowadays we use just to show visitors inside the Cathedral's tower what's happening just a few metres away outside. Over the years we have gone through quite a few analogue video recorders, but eventually the wind-blown dust within the ancient stone tower tends to get inside their mechanisms, and they eventually fail us. With our latest (second hand) one now on the blink, and with the camera not giving us such a good image, we've not been too fussed to strip down the recorder and try to get it working again. Our greater need at the moment is to reinstate our internet connection so everyone can watch our birds live.
Nick M
Peregrine Project Technical Advisor
Peregrine Falcons first nested on Derby's Cathedral, England, in 2006. Our Peregrine Project is now run by a partnership between Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, Derby City Council, Derby Cathedral and the Cathedral Quarter. Here is what's happening in 2024. . .
7 comments:
Thank you so much Nick M, for all the latest information and your wonderful dedication.
All your efforts are really appreciated,in bringing us armchair viewers, all the comings and goings of the cathedrals wonderful Birds.
We Pray and hope a solution will be found soon,to enable you to relax,and then, hopefully Wendy and others will be able to assist with the recordings.
Second Kate's comments ... fingers firmly crossed for successful internet connection!
we were very happy to see the 4 preshes eggs and we sure the silver ring on the male. we sure the male wiggling on the eggs to keep them walme. we are looking fouwed to them haching and we hope you do to and we were happy when we hurd the infmashn so thanq you for for telling us.
Thanks Nick M for providing us with proof that once more we have a clutch of four eggs and glad Zebra class enjoyed seeing them as well. Here's hoping we manage to eventually get the internet connected in time to see the chicks emerging.
On a different topic I find the treatment of Chris Packham by certain people particularly on Facebook, and brought to light on the Victoria Derbyshire programme, utterly deplorable. His dedicated efforts to protect wildlife can only be applauded.
Thank you for putting the video on for us to watch, we enjoyed watching it.
We are looking forward to seeing the eggs hatch.
When did the incubation start because we would like to try to work out when we think they will hatch?
Im guesing on the 9th- 10th may.
Hi Squirrels class, it's a bit tricky to know exactly when incubation started but if the first egg was laid on the 1st April I'm guessing that the peregrines would have started to incubate about a week after that. I hope that helps you to work out the hatching date.
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