Abseil day in our 20th Year!

Today (19th) Nick Evans, who made the current nest platform, abseiled down to clean it up and adjust the cameras before the start of the nesting season. He was assisted by Nick Moyes.
Some anti-pigeon plastic spikes which had fallen off the top of one of the cameras (designed to stop the falcons using it as a perch) was removed and replaced.
Wendy Barrter has put together this speeded up video. The clean up took Nick 42 minutes, the video lasts just 5!

Derby Peregrines 19th Feb 2025 at 13:31 Nestbox clean up 

This is our annual clean-up event and it has just occured to us that this is our 20th year with this successful project which started back  in 2006 when the first platform was installed by the two aforementioned Nicks.
The first web cams were added by Nick Moyes a year later in 2007.

Hopefully in the next few weeks you may see (and hear) the peregrine pair displaying to each other and also scraping a shallow depression in the gravel where eggs will eventually be laid. Mating itself usually takes place on the stonework above the nest, out of view of the cameras!

Do put a comment on this blog if you see any activity?

Fingers crossed for a successful outcome in this special year!

The Project Team (volunteers Nick Moyes and Nick Brown plus DWT staff Diane Gould and Marc Whitlock who will be organising the Watch Point events).

The project is managed by Derbyshire Wildlife Trust with wonderful support from Derby Cathedral, Cathedral Quarter and Derby City Council.

A New Year begins

Happy New Year to all our blog readers and webcam watchers. We've had snow, ice and much wet weather in recent months but, as usual, the mighty peregrine falcon can take all this in its stride. Its mountain habitats are far wilder than anything they might experience in Derby, here in the centre of England. 

We've turned a corner, and soon the days will soon start to become noticeably longer, and our pair of pergrine falcons will become more active on the nest platform. Occasionally they visit the nest ledge on the side of Derby Cathedral to maintain their claim on their nest site and to get ready for the next breeding season.

Last night we took a screenshot of the nest from Cam 1 and took another this morning. There has clearly been activity and some nest-scraping between these shots. 

You may notice a small, spiked piece of plastic in the nighttime shot. This is a fragment of a bird spike that must have come loose and fallen from one of our cameras. They were placed there some years ago to discourage any bird from perching directly on top of the cameras. It's nothing to be worried about. They're very light and this fragment is easily moved. So, although we'll remove this when we do a pre-breeding maintenance abseil, it won't hinder the birds in any way. As we see in the daytime shot a few hours later, it will simply be pushed aside as if a twig had fallen into the scape and ignored. 

We have reset our visitor counter for 2025, noting a significant increase in unique visits to our blog and webcams last year. We ended December with 321,000 such visits - up some 90,000 on 2023), and we look forward to welcoming many of you again over the coming twelve months.