Web cams to watch

Should you want to see videos of our Derby Cathedral birds in years gone by (2006-2018) you will find many scattered through past posts on this blog.
Alternatively, go to YouTube, search for "VC57UK", and all 150+ videos will come up, in year order.

As the current peregrine season progresses, we'll take a look back at a few of these videos and milestones in our project, so you can get a sense of what stage the 2020 birds are probably at.

So let's start where it all began, back in April 2006...

We had already measured up the tower and pre-constructed the new 'temporary' nest ledge, but appalling weather that year had forced us to postpone installation until 5th April. We used extra long ropes  and pulleys (supplied by Derby Mountain Rescue Team), but it was our own Nick Moyes and climbing partner, Nick Evans, who you see doing the actual installation.



Live Peregrine webcams to watch
On the basis that ours own webcams are not now going to be re-connected this season, here are some links to other LIVE peregrine web cams around the UK. Where shown, the egg count was last made at 25 March:

• The Wildlife Trusts host many web cams including peregrines at Leamington Town Hall and Nottingham, ospreys at several sites, barn owls etc. See here.
• (Nottingham had its first egg on 16/3, should be 4 by now)
• Leamington Town Hall (hosted by Warwickshire Wildlife Trust has 3 eggs)

And here are a few more around the UK:

• Chichester (no eggs yet) 
• Woking (5 eggs!)
• Bath (first egg 13/3, guessing a full clutch by now)
• Norwich (4 eggs)

Other wildlife webcams:
And for a website which has links to literally hundreds of web cams in the UK and around the world, go here but be aware that many are not working presently either because the birds have not started nesting yet or because funding has run out.
This Latvian white tailed eagle web cam IS working and so is this osprey cam in Wales and the Manton Bay nest at Rutland Water where at least one adult has returned already.

Alternatively, go onto YouTube and search for 'species x' web cams...you'll get old videos as well as live ones. If you find any particularly good cams do please send a comment with a link.....European birds preferred!

Nick B/Nick M
for the Project Team

It seems we've failed

If you read our previous post, you will be aware that the very final step in connecting our webcameras back to the internet was thwarted  a few weeks ago by the simple absence of a very specialised security key. It is needed to unlock one side of the base of a piece of City Council-owned street furniture, close to Derby Cathedral.

Webcam view of a first egg, seen back in 2007

Without access via this key, it is physically impossible for a high-speed fibre cable to be connected up to the new wireless device which was specially fitted to the top of  a tall pole so as to communicate with the inside of Derby Cathedral tower.

It's as simple as that: no key; no webcam connection.

Our colleagues at the Council and their contractors have done their level best to locate the key. They tell us that last week a huge bunch of keys, supplied by the lock manufacturers was taken to the camera pole, but with no success. Nothing fitted.

And now, as the country enters at least a three-week lockdown through Coronavirus, we have to admit our deep disappointment and sheer frustration at our failure to jump this final hurdle. It seems highly unlikely that we shall now be able to find which individual or council department has possession of this key. And, even if we do,  would anyone now be allowed to spend time out on Irongate making that last essential link connection? We doubt it.

We are deeply sorry to every one of you who has supported us, and to whom we gave our word that we would undoubtedly reinstate our peregrine falcon webcam in advance of this nesting season. Everything was in place. We did all we could, but it wasn't quite enough, and time has now caught up with us. We will all miss out on the exciting scenes we've come to enjoy in past years of the world's fastest creature living out its life, laying its eggs and tending to its newborn chicks on the side of our city's Cathedral tower. From past history, it is likely that our falcon will lay her first egg over the next seven to ten days...but with the cathedral closed, we won't be able to check on the monitor in the tower.....or report back to you all.

Of course, should the lost key to this pole be found, and that final connection made, we will update you immediately. Everything else is in place - the cameras cleaned; a new microphone installed; the nest platform prepared, and all the IT infrastructure wired up. But one simple plug just cannot be connected. 

So, a big thank you from the Peregrine Project Team and from our friends at Derby City Council who we know will be just as frustrated as we are.

Nick M and Nick B.
Peregrine Project Team

Ps. In our next blog post we will suggest other active bird web cams you can watch including some peregrine ones......




 

Missing wifi key - do you have it?

As many people in the UK and elsewhere adjust to finding themselves confined to their homes during the developing coronavirus pandemic, thoughts will undoubtedly turn to ways to keep ourselves occupied and sane when we can't get out and about.

It has long been understood that access to wildlife and to the outdoors has a significant, demonstrable impact on our mental and physical well-being (see here, here, here and here). And so, finding ourselves constrained from travelling or coming together with like-minded souls to experience the natural environment may be a challenge for many people.

For our own part, the Derby Cathedral Peregrine Project has, over the years, received many messages from people who were ill or housebound and unable to travel to get their 'fix' of nature. For them, using webcameras like ours offered a very special opportunity to watch and enjoy wildlife from home. For some it was a real lifeline to nature. And so it is now more important than ever before that we provide as many of these opportunities for safe enjoyment of wildlife whilst so many of us are considering self-isolating to avoid the spread of this horrible virus. 

Worm Purple technicians installing a Siklu
wireless link on a streetside column
on Irongate.

Over the last few months we have been inching back towards restoring our webcamera connections. Thanks to Tim at Derby City Council IT department, and to Mark at Worm Purple, we now have a pair of wireless units mounted and ready to link our equipment inside Derby Cathedral's tower equipment to the internet. One unit has been set up inside the clockroom of the tower, whilst its partner is mounted on a council-owned column in the street below. We know they work and are ready to go. But...

...there was still one small but critically important problem left to surmount. The key could not be found!

No, this isn't the wifi key or 'password' needed to set up the wifi units - it's the actual, physical key needed to unlock one side of the base of the column so that the network/PoE cables can be plugged in to complete the link and power up the Siklu transmitter unit.  For the last two weeks they've been asking high and low to see who at the Council has it. And now, we hear, it might have been found, and we shall know in the next day or so if it has.

Once we do, we can complete the re-configuring the new equipment to send a video stream to our webcam-hosting company, and from there direct to your PC, wherever in the world that may be.  Whether we shall be in a safe enough position by mid-May to run watchpoints on the Cathedral Green, it is simply impossible to say at his stage in the pandemic. But with some of the UK's peregrines already having laid their first egg of the season, making that final internet connection for our webcameras - so that we can all watch them from home - can not come soon enough.

Nick M.
for Peregrine Project Team.

Derby male takes over at Belper after resident male dies

It is widely known now that a pair of peregrines has been nesting on East Mill in Belper for several years, in fact since 2012.

Last week, the male of the pair was found close to the mill. It was injured either from colliding with a car or a bridge or both. On xray at a friendly vets practice, where no charges are made for treating wildlife, it transpired that this bird had been shot at some point. There were two lead pellets, a superficial one in the skin but another deeper one in the bird's flight muscle.
Sadly the bird died subsequently at the vet's.
Lead shot is poisonous but the extent to which the shot in the bird's body played a major role in its ultimate death is unknown.
Suffice to say, the bird had been illegally shot - presumably somewhere near Belper causing considerable outrage...and rightly so.
See this piece written shortly before the bird died (and this piece after).

On Sunday (8th), bird watchers with cameras at the mill spotted and photographed a new male which has already taken over. This bird bears an orange ring on its left leg with the number 035 on it.
Checking our records, it was reared (and ringed) at Derby Cathedral in 2018....so it is still less than two years old.

035 photographed at Belper by Graham Bacon (c)

In that year, three chicks fledged at Derby: a definite male (weighing 545 grams at ringing) which died of canker within a few weeks and a definite female which weighed a much heavier 815 grams.
The third bird (035) weighed in at 665 grams and was considered likely to be a female....wrongly as it now turns out. Sexing young peregrines at that early stage is not an exact science; heavy males can weigh more than light females...…

035 has now been seen mating with the resident female at Belper so hopes of getting eggs are high.

With thanks to Ian Bradley for the latest news and for getting permission to use Graham's fine photo.

Nick B
The Project Team