Saturday's Watch Point, a rescue, and some stunning photos

Saturday's Watch Point became a rather prolonged affair. Our second male (XL) fledged earlier that morning at 06:45am. And just as it began, a report was received that a bird had landed on St Mary's Bridge, behind the Silk Mill Museum (aka Museum of Making), and had fallen in the river.

Young male, XL, down by the River Derwent.

By the time our volunteers had found it, the bird was standing amongst vegetation beside the river. Another stealth capture with a big box and a large towel soon got him captured. 

An XL-ent capture (Photo Helen Naylor)

We returned via the Watch Point to let the visitors there take a quick look at him, sitting quietly in the box, before once again climbing the 200 or so spiral staircase steps and returning him to the roof of the Cathedral tower. Alice, our new Peregrine Engagement Officer lifted off the cover and gently let him out. 

 

Alice returned to the Watch Point, whilst I stopped to power up my laptop and vainly searched our movement-detection recordings in the camera for interesting clips showing either of the two young males' first flight. By the time I'd done, the Watch Point was almost over, and I stayed to chat with Helen, Alice and Chris for a while.

XL back on the Cathedral tower roof

Just as I was about to leave, a cry went up, and we saw a young peregrine making a graceful descent from the tower. We assumed it was XK, our young female who was still on the platform and the last to leave. But she was still visible, and as the descending flight progressed, we realised it was XL, and that he wasn't going to make it. With unerring accuracy he headed straight for the centre of one of four huge lime trees right next to the Cathedral. Tumbling into the branches, he finally came to rest in good view of the road, and spent the next half hour or so recovering his dignity. Surrounded by so much vegetation, it seemed unlikely he would do no more than tumble to the ground. So we waited to carry out the inevitable rescue.

And waited. And waited. But finally he set off again, this time flying low across a nearby car park and landing at the base of a sloping rooftop, before scrambling his way to the top.  From there he made his way across a flat roof to the top of a wall at the rear of the Dolphin Pub. By now we had volunteers and passers by amassing on the other side of the road, next to the Old Silk Mill pub to watch him. But XL was in no hurry. More snoozing was in order. And we watched and waited for the next three hours.

We waited some more, but didn't feel we could remain there all evening. We had even resorted to reaching up from below with a long pole to wake him up and get him to move up higher. By 5pm, we felt we could stay with him no longer, so we left our details with the police foot patrols and with the staff at the two nearby pubs whose outdoor customers all had a perfect view of him. One of our regular visitors, Ian, also took our details and later that night it was a relief to get a text saying he'd seen XL high up on the power station next to the Museum of Making. He seemed safe for the night.

XL on top of a low roof by Full Street.

On Sunday morning he called again to say he'd now seen both juveniles on the roof of Jurys Inn, being fed by both parents. With female XK still in the next platform, we've spent the rest of Sunday expecting her to fledge, though at the time of writing (7pm) simply sleeping and chewing at the remains of old bird feet seemed to be her preferred options!

Over two hours of snoozing on top of a wall!

Here are some excellent photos taken by Dave Farmer (gdfotos.co.uk) from Saturday,showing one of the juveniles being fed high up on a rooftop and three photos of the female taking off from the camera at the left of the nest platform.
Further text will be added later but please see the comments on the previous post for the latest news up to 10am Sunday 29th. new comments should now be posted to this blog update if you will..

The Project team