Clean up and a new camera

NOTICE: Monday 4th March. Maintenance work is being done on our cameras today - this may affect some webcam streams. (A second attempt to replace tower-cam)

Last Tuesday (19th), the cathedral tower was thrice 'nicked'.

Nick E hangs on (face mask to protect from dust and spores)

Nicks Moyes, Evans and Brown were busy all day at various places up and down the tower. Nick M and Nick E abseiled down to the nest platform to give it its annual inspection and clean up; to remount and clean the two existing cameras, clean the gravel and also to fit a completely new camera.

It was a long day, so long indeed that the cathedral had been locked up by the time Moyes and Brown came down the tower sometime after 6pm (Nick E having wisely gone home a bit sooner). Trapped in the dark between the heavy wooden West door and the glass doors just inside the cathedral was an interesting experience (it was our own fault for staying up there so late!).  Fortunately we managed to push open the exterior door but couldn't relock it from the outside so we had to stay put until (by good fortune) the bell ringers arrived for their evening practice!

Nick M busy at the platform

View East. The police aerial is just left of the flats

We hope you agree that the pictures from the two nest cameras are much clearer now. The lenses were cleaned inside and out. All the prey remains were removed and the gravel re-spread and treated with an anti-bacterial and anti-fungal spray. Next year we'll have to put in some new gravel as well as thoroughly check the platform - so far it's doing well!

Nick B's role was to climb a ladder into the bell chamber and 'accept' the long cable for the new camera which Nick M fed through a small hole in the louvres above the nest platform. He then had to feed the cable carefully through a series of holes in various floors to get it down to the ringing chamber where the IT gear is kept (video servers, routers, video recorders, TV monitor  - you name it, it's there!).

Then Nick M fixed the new camera to the side wall of the platform. Its wide angled, zoom lens will give a new angle on the nest with a view out over Derby looking North East. As yet Nick M hasn't decided how best to show this new view. Streaming the view out to everyone is quite expensive though grant money should cover at least the key breeding months. However, he still needs to sort out how to show images from four cameras when he only has space for three......watch this space!

First ever image of the female using this new Axis camera

When we arrived the male was on the nest but soon flew off eastwards. The female was watching us most of the day from the top of the police aerial mast in Chester Green though she later moved onto Jurys Inn's lettering (I still think the illuminated letters provide them with warm talons!).

View NW towards the university (big block on the horizon)

Finally, after a lot of intercom to and fro ("move the camera a bit left and up, no sorry I meant down") the positions were finally fixed and the abseilers lowered themselves down to the nave roof.
A successful day for sure. Next job will be for Nick M to put the new 'pud cam' back - that's the one that looks horizontally across the ledge above the nest towards Jurys Inn. It too should give a nice crisp image!
Further updates on the cameras will follow....







Since the disturbance we caused the birds have been back performing their normal display behaviour on the platform....see comments to the previous blog post - so they soon got over our presence. If you should see interesting courtship (or mating especially)


Nick E on his way down as seen from a window in the tower

do please note the time and let us know, either with a comment on the blog or by emailing peregrines@derbyshirewt.co.uk .
The peregrines in Bristol have been mating for over two weeks already...but remember that last year they laid their first egg on 10th March - perhaps the earliest if any UK urban pair.


Nick B (on behalf of Nick M and E)

By heck, its a long way down.....

We were fortunate to have the free services of two very experienced abseilers, Sam and Daz from 'Acclimbatize', an outdoor training company based near Matlock, Derbyshire, to help with the abseil and nest clean today.

Accompanied by Nick M, they went down and re-positioned the camera that has been hanging precariously by a thin wire for the last few weeks, cleaned both cameras, checked the nest platform and cleaned it up.
The cameras were left on so that everyone

could see what was going on, sometimes perhaps a little bit too close for comfort! Apologies if so.
Anyway, despite a cold east wind, the tasks were all successfully completed.

In the morning, we held the annual meeting with the project partners - The Cathedral, Derby Museums, Cathedral Quarter and the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust. The bid to the lottery was explained and discussed and partners were brought up to speed both with what had happened last year and how we would hope to proceed this coming year if lottery money come through and and also if it doesn't.

Last week we were contacted by the lottery and advised that we would stand a far better chance of success if we would agree to having the bid discussed in April, ie in the new financial year when more money will be being distributed, rather than in March as originally promised. This was agreed to though it will make it more difficult for us to do much new work in this coming season, which will (we hope) be well underway by April.

The photos shows the three abseilers preparing their ropes and looking over the edge prior to descending. The falcon was on Jury's Inn with the tiercel when we arrived on the tower top but she did make a single circuit of the tower (loudly shouting her displeasure) before flying back to the JI sign. The tiercel, true to form, stayed put!

Tony Grantham was on hand most of the day both to attend the meeting and to introduce us to the new Head Verger. It was Tony's very last day at work!
Details of the service and farewell 'do' at the cathedral were posted a few days ago - so do scroll back if you missed them. Everyone is welcome.

Nick B/Nick M

New Season Update

Updated 03 March (see end)

Spring is nearly upon us. With reports of peregrines already mating in the south of England, our own pair here in Derby are also showing clear signs of getting ready for this year's breeding season.

Already we are seeing courtship displays on the nest ledge. This involves both birds standing absolutely still on the nest platform, heads bowed down and facing each other. This may last for three or more minutes, and is often accompanied by a loud "ee-chupp, ee-chupp" call from the female. The multi-image shot on the left shows the female standing in the nest scrape just a few days ago, with the male standing on the right hand side. They were motionless. Unfortunately the pictures are a little misty, but we've since cleaned the lenses. And here's a clip from the 2008 season that we recorded to show you what happens.

The male always seems to lose his nerve in the end. After some minutes of head-bowing (or aggressive-sounding "ee-chupping") he flees the nest ledge, leaving her all alone. There she may pick at a few stones or, more frequently, may indulge in some nest-scraping . She will lie down on the ground and push back with her feet to create the hollow scrape in which her eggs will later be laid. All the images of the female in the series below were captured just a few days ago, on 24th February.

Food may also be brought back to the nest by the male, which he then passes to his larger mate, and we're receiving reports from webcam viewers that this is being seen too.

With the weather finally warming up, Nick Brown and I took the opportunity today to do some last minute spring-cleaning. This meant notifying the police before I made a quick abseil down from the top of the tower to the nest ledge where the cameras were cleaned and everything made ready for the new season. We also took the opportunity to help Derby Cathedral by cleaning out their gutters and even discovered a few minor roof maintenance issues which we'll be reporting back to them. It was less than an hour after we'd left the roof that the birds returned to claim the Cathedral platform as their own.

With the season advancing rapidly, do look out for mating. This happens very frequently through March, right up to the day of egg-laying towards the end of the month. Passers-by in Derby may be lucky to witness this for themselves, but webcam watchers also stand a good chance of seeing something. Our birds do seem to like the tower top in front of our camera, and over the last two years we've captured some stunning moments which are archived on this blog.

Have you seen a special moment you'd like to share? If so, leave a comment on this blog, or hit print-screen on your PC and post us the image. You can put them on our Flickr Photo Pool where over a 1000 images were uploaded by viewers last season.

We'll bring you more stills and videos as the season progresses, and hope you'll stay with us to share once again all the intimate moments of these very special birds' lives.
The number of hits we've had since the beginning of the year (now close on 50,000) is more than double last year's figure by the same time (19,000) and quadruple the 2008 figure (11,000)....due mainly to the world first 'night hunting video' which newcomers can still see by scrolling down to the post of 11th January....
The BBC's Springwatch programme has recently been requesting video clips of our birds so we are optimistic these may be shown in future....we'll keep you informed.

Update: In an attempt to resolve the problem of our video server freezing up every few months, Axis (the manufacturers of our video server) have recommended that we set our sytem to cease uploading to the internet for a short period each day. Being British, I've selected a time of 3am for our webcams to close for 15 minutes.  Sorry if this affects you as a world-wide viewer. I'll happily change the time we break - I just don't know when is best for minimum disruption. (All suggestions welcome)

Nick M
Derby Museum & Art Gallery

Platform maintenance work

Now the cold weather has finally left us, we plan to abseil down Derby Cathedral's tower later this week to do some maintenance work to the nest platform and cameras. This is quite a bit later than we'd hoped, but it still won't interfere with the birds drive to nest here again.

We will probably disconect the live internet feed whilst we are dangling around in front of the cameras for an hour or two on Thursday. It's all subject to the weather being kind to us, of course, but as usual we've informed the police in case anyone reports unusual activity near a protected species. The two Nicks shown here installing the platform back in 2006 don't want to get "nicked" - it'll simply get too confusing, espcecially as there will be two further Nicks helping out on the tower that day, too!

Here's an old YouTube video clip we made back in 2006 when we first installed installed the platform, and life for many of us was never quite the same again!

Exciting News

As we begin to approach the 2008 breeding season, we have some great news items to announce.

Firstly, work started today on the filming of a DVD on "The Peregrines of Derby Cathedral". We were approached by a commercial company, Delta Echo Media, to help them produce a documentary on Derby Cathedral's peregrine falcons. This fitted in perfectly with our aim to promote awareness of these incredible urban predators, as well as raising funds for the partners to put towards our conservation efforts. The DVD should be available for purchase by April and, for the moment, forgive us if we hold back on the news of the major BBC TV presenter we hope is agreeable to contributing to our film.

Also today we had BBC TV's East Midlands Today coming to Derby to film. (So we ended up filming the filmers!) BBC TV had picked up on the national news story that peregrine falcons around the world are now beginning to use the lights of our big cities to help them see their prey when they hunt at night. Follow this link to read more on this story. Here's a clip we captured in summer 2007 of what we thought at the time was a Snipe, but opinion is now mixed, and it could conceivably be a Green Sandpiper. Notice the light underbelly in the infra-red illumination, which would make it stand out at night against a dark sky, making it easy prey for a fast-flying falcon. It was brought to the platform at 1am, but of course it could have been brought from a cache elsewhere on the tower. What we really need is a thermal-imaging camera!



Ed Drewitt from Bristol Museum & Art Gallery is one of the pair who published the article on peregrines hunting at night in "British Birds". We're looking forward to welcoming Ed to Derby later in the week when he comes to have a closer look at our webcam set-up.

"Pudding-cam" has now been ordered for the top of the tower from Acam Technology, and we hope to be able to quickly run a cable up the 400 year-old spiral stone staircase to do a short test before making a proper install in the next month or so. We're all looking forward to seeing how well we can view the peregrines on top of the Cathedral's gargoyles, and perhaps capture more intimate footage from a really close vantage point.

And finally, the weather stayed fine to allow us to abseil down the side of the Cathedral today to re-adjust our cameras and check and clean the platform. We forgot to take the camera feed offline whilst we did this, so our apologies for any weird pictures or close-ups of dangling legs you may have seen around noon (GMT). We were pleased to have had Nick Evans helping us again, as he's the man who built the peregrine ledge for us, and he report that it's still in perfect condition. (Our thanks to Mary, a Museum volunteer, who also helped us out on the day)

Tony, Nick & Nick
Derby Cathedral Peregrine Project

Donkey Stories

Earlier today on this Blog someone asked about a medieval story regarding a donkey and the parish church of All Saints, Derby (now Derby Cathedral)

Well.........

There is a story, which I am led to believe is true, that goes something like this:

One day a rope was secured to the top of the tower by a troupe of medieval circus performers and this was extended down St Mary's Gate. A donkey was taken to the top of the tower (how I have no idea!!)and was carried down the rope on the shoulders of one of the performers. Unfortunately, at some stage they both fell off and through the roof of one of the houses - neither was injured, thank goodness, though the roof had to be renewed! On the same day a young child was put into a wheelbarrow and pushed down the rope - they got to the end successfully. It must have been quite a sight and puts September's fund-raising abseil in a different light!!!!

Hope that answers the question

Falcons Eye View

You have seen the Cathedral Tower either from the Green or on the web - now is the chance to get up close and personal as they say. On the weekend of September 8/9 Derby Mountain Rescue Team and Derby Cathedral will be holding a sponsored ABSEIL down the south face of the tower. All monies raised will be split between the Cathedral and the Rescue Team. All are welcome to join in, either as a participant or just an onlooker and supporter. There will be refreshments available from the Cathedral Coffee Shop and on the Saturday it is hoped that the BBC Bus will be there. For more information go to www.derbymrt.org.uk/abseil.htm and join in the fun.

Those who, like me, believe the staircase was put there for very good reasons can keep both feet firmly on the ground and support all those others who choose a quicker way down!!

Hope to see you there