Our clutch is complete and a possible sighting update

Update 14th April: a bird watcher in North Derbyshire has seen a peregrine with an orange/red colour ring on its leg but he was unable to see the ring number. Could this be one of our cathedral birds? We await further sightings.......
We now have a full clutch of four eggs (video below). This last egg surprised some of us as we thought this year there would only be three. The reason for that is because we thought that incubation had begun in earnest after the second egg, though it may have been the cooler weather which encouraged them to warm the eggs more than normal. (Full incubation begins just before the last egg is due to be laid)
Our thanks to RJ who reported all four eggs visible at 09.19 on April 5th. On checking our recorded footage, it's clear the egg appeared sometime between 10pm on 4th April and 3am the next day. Surprisingly, we could not see the exact moment; it all happened so quickly and under cover of lots of feathers.

The video below shows a moment on 5th April when the female was relieved from incubating the eggs by the male. We see how much larger she is than the male. Notice, too, the somewhat darker shade of grey around his head than she has. The angle they are at does make it hard even for the Project Team members to tell them apart sometimes.

The female will do most of the incubating, now. Occasionally she will leave the eggs to feed and preen herself. The male will cover the eggs as best he can while she's off but, being smaller, he's really not as good at this as the female and she will return as soon as she can, pushing the male out of the way!

His main task is to feed his mate. She will not hunt again until the chicks are quite big....and that's at least six or seven weeks away.

Meanwhile, we're sure you'll keep an eye on our birds from time to time to ensure everything is going to plan.

One day some years ago, it rained very hard from the East and drenched the incubating female. We were sure the nest would flood. Fortunately the drainage holes worked and the eggs survived but she certainly had a very testing time of it. Let's hope that doesn't happen this year.

Today it is very cold in Derby following yesterday's snow. The wind is from the north and it feels more like January!

We also hope you manage to get out to see some wildlife 'for real' once the weather warms up a bit. Migrant birds are coming back and the first influx of swallows can't be far away (though if they have any sense they will be lingering further south for the time being!).

Already a few migrating ospreys have been seen in Derbyshire. Beatrice, one of Roy Dennis' satellite tagged ospreys roosted one night near Fernilee Reservoir in the north of the county and an osprey of unknown origin flew north over the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust's nature reserve at Wyver Lane, just outside Belper a couple of days ago. And a third bird was seen at Carsington Reservoir.

To follow the progress of Roy's tagged birds just put 'roy dennis' or 'highland foundation for wildlife' into a search engine and his fascinating website will come up.

Meanwhile, here in Derby, we have time to 'chill'...in both senses of the word!

We'll do our best to answer any questions you may have so do please keep on sending in comments.


Nick M and Nick B (DWT)

Ps. The faulty power supply to our Cisco wireless internet connection was changed on Saturday. This devise was overheating and cutting out and, thanks to Gavin from SERCO, we have been supplied with a replacement which we hope will give as equally long service.

Pps. Double click on the Clustrmap world map on the blog to see exactly where in the UK and in the world people have been watching our birds from. Countries (some 47 of them) include Lybia, Mongolia and the Cook Islands!

Hatching time is approaching!

Falcon on eggs and chick with broken egg fragment beside her.

STOP PRESS: It appears our first chick hatched around 2am this morning (9th May). Well done Green Class at Brigg Infants School for telling us what you saw.

Inside the Ringing Chamber at Derby Cathedral

Interest in our cameras and blog is mounting now that hatching date is approaching, Despite my sudden  departure from Derby Museum at the end of March (and a number of kind comments from some of you about my "demise"), I have nevertheless still been active within the Project. But incubation is always a quiet time, and there has been little to report upon, which has proved somewhat useful for me at this challenging time.  But visitor interest is only set to increase now, assuming that at least one of our four beautiful eggs do indeed hatch (around May 9th-10th, we think).

I had an opportunity to go up into Derby on Friday, so I called in to the Cathedral and went up to the ringing chamber to check our equipment. It was lucky I did, as one of our DVD recorders had recently frozen up and stopped recording. Having restarted them, I went through the remaining six-hour chunks of recordings that had been made and found a couple of interesting clips which I thought were worth sharing here.

The first was a lovely change over (dare I say, eggs-change?) between the female and the male, around 7.30am on May 3rd. The low, raking sunlight really highlights the shallow depression, or scrape, that the birds make for their nest, and you can really get a feel for the difference in size between the larger female (falcon) and the much smaller male (known as a tiercel)




The second clip shows a lovely sequence with our adult male arriving with food. You can just hear him calling very faintly in the distance as he flies in with prey. He continues calling from the tower top, and the adult female responds to him. She sounds so much louder because she is incubating four eggs on a nest platform on which our microphone is located, and it picks her up so much more clearly . After a few moments she flies up to take the food item from him, flies briefly around the tower and then returns to a favoured point to start the process of plucking and feeding.



For those wondering about my future involvement with the Peregrine Project, I can only say that the project partners met last week to discuss how we take things forward this season. My former colleagues at Derby Museum are also working on getting permission for me to continue accessing the City Council's VPN (virtual private network) which for the last four years has allowed me to zoom the cameras in and out, listen for activity and remotely restart the equipment or to switch camera feeds. Whether I get new passwords to access that network before the eggs hatch our remains to be seen. It'll be touch and go, I fear.

But rest assured that we'll do all we can to maintain the same level of activity and involvement which brings so many of you in to watch and read about Derby's famous peregrines, or to visit Derby for yourselves. In fact, we hope we can find ways to enhance things in the year ahead. We're always keen to listen to viewers suggestions, too. Just leave us a comment on this blog with your ideas.

Third Egg

Third Egg
At 20:40pm our third egg arrived, it seems.
I missed it myself as I was busy uploading the video clips of the last two egg-laying moments to YouTube!

Below is the first egg being laid at 11pm on 1st April 2011, after keeping us all guessing and worrying why she was so much later than last year. Had we got a new female, one expert asked. The answer was that we certainly weren't aware of one of the pair being replaced - but it wasn't beyond the realms of possibility.



Here's the second egg, laid at 11.20am on 4th April. Listen very carefully and you can actually hear the sound of it hitting the gravel!

Egg-tastic (Second Egg)

Egg number two arrived around 11.18am this morning, and the screenshot below was immediately posted to our Flickr Pool. In fact Marski101 and Craig both captured and posted this identical image, showing the newly laid, moist egg, which is darker and shinier than its counterpart.

On average, Peregrines lay clutches of four eggs, so it's likely that we'll see at least one more in the next couple of days. We can't expect all the eggs to survive to maturity, of course. In fact they may not even all hatch. But for now lets just wait and see how many we get.

Finally, Our First Egg.

After keeping everyone on tenterhooks for days on end, Derby's peregrines finally have their first egg of the season. Around 10pm this evening she once again came down to the nest ledge and looked as if she was about to lay. And this time she did. The first glimpse of an egg was seen around 22.57 this evening.

First view - captured by webcam viewer, Jean Burton and posted to Flickr

Our pair have certainly kept us all on hanging on, causing a flurry of comments and concern from everyone here in Derby and, indeed, right around the world. Under infra-red light that egg looks like a white chicken's egg, but when daybreak comes you'll see the rich reddish brown of its true colours. Do not be alarmed when you see this egg and the others that are undoubtedly on the way being left, apparently unattended for hours on end. This is normal, and we'll blog about why this happens this later.

I was able to put the project's brand new smartphone to very good use tonight, having taken it to bed for a much-needed early night, after an exhausting and life-changing week for me. I had seen our female well and truly ensconced in that typical egg-laying pose at 10pm, but simply had to catch some sleep. I woke at midnight, turned on the smartphone (an HTC Desire HD) and went online to view the webcam whilst still under the duvet. There was the falcon, clearly in an incubating position. If any excuse were needed to get out of bed to make a cup of tea and do a bit of late-night computing, then surely that was the moment. Flickr To capture and post your own webcam snapshots which we can then put into our blog, follow the link to our Flickr photogroup at the upper left of this blog. There you can join up to our group, or if you're not sure how to, you can read instructions on how to capture and load up those snapshots. Please don't turn off the "share this" option as it makes it harder for the project team to capture your best screen shots and embed them in the blog.

Nick Moyes

formerly Keeper of Natural Sciences

Derby Museum and Art Gallery Please bear with us during the immediate period following my recent departure from Derby Museum. Currently I do not have direct access to our networks to control the cameras and video server, to take images or remotely reboot our video server if it freezes. If the latter happens, please leave a comment on this blog and also email museums@derby.gov.uk. We're putting steps in place for the Assistant Head of Museums to try to restart the equipment for the time being, should a freeze-up occur.

Egg Laying Imminent?

Nope!
It looked like we'd have our first egg later today. This picture was taken at 7am on Wednesday morning local time and everything looked promising until 7.30am when she moved away from the scrape.
I suspect the comment from one of our readers, Craig in nearby Nottingham, reflects many of you who are watching this morning. Keep checking our blog comments below this post to catch up on all the latest happenings that our world-wide webcam watchers are reporting. And post those snapshots onto our Flickr Photo Pool. Just follow the link at the top left of the blog. There you'll find all the information you need.

I'll post more pictures and news here when I'm able.

As at 2pm there's no sign of the female at the platform, and certainly no egg. What a waiting game these old birds love to play on us!

Update: By non Thursday  there was still no sign of an egg, despite lots of false starts and typical egg-laying poses.

Nick Moyes
ex-Keeper of Natural Sciences
Derby Museum and Art Gallery

07.17 Breakfast prepared, still no eggs. 07.18 Tiercel is down on the wall below the scrape. 07.19 He's off. 07.22 Tiercel is on the tower. 07.25 Have a quick move around, perhaps dig the scrape a bit more. 07.26 More digging. 07.27 All fluffed up right over the scrape... camera zooms in, the ANTICPATION... isn't doing anything for the Tiercel. And the Falcon relaxes. 07.29 Moves off the scrape to the ledge. Camera zooms in... yep, no eggs there, and reset. 07.30 Having a preen. Got to look your best with these camera closeups. This minute by minute report was brought to you by someone who should be getting ready for work! By Craig on Mating on the Gutter on 30/03/11

Mating on the Gutter

Watch this amazing video of our two birds mating earlier this morning. It was 8am and our female was perched in the sunshine on the projecting lead gutter which drains water away from the top of Derby's Cathedral. Our male was nearest the camera. Just as the bells started tolling he seemed to be stirred into action, and moved off to briefly mate with her before landing on the platform way below, where we hear him chirping gently off camera.

Last year we saw them mating the same day as the first egg was laid, and we are expecting this year's first egg any day now. The previous blog post shows another amazing clip of them mating on the tower back in 2008.

It's getting egg-sighting!

Egg laying is upon us. We're at that time when it's anyone's guess when the first egg will be laid. It'll probably be within the next 48 hours, possibly much sooner. We now know that Nottingham's peregrines have already laid their first egg, and ours can't be far behind.

I suspect one of my abiding positive memories of this year will be the happy grins of Craig and others out on Cathedral Green on 16th March when we were lucky enough to see our falcons mating briefly on the very topmost pinnacle of the Cathedral's tower. I think this is only the second time I've witnessed this for real, though the best video we ever captured is repeated below. I just love the way the male soars in from the right and then lands right in front of the camera.

From comments left on the blog, it's clear that a number of readers are now returning after a year's absence. If so, welcome back. Our web camera addresses had to change last year. So if your favourite links are no longer working, simply follow the links provided on the top left of this blog to reach our live cameras and other resources.



Technical problems.
Both our Philips DVD/HDD 3460H recorders have been exhibiting identical faults over the last year, with both disc trays being immensely reluctant to open. Maybe it's the dusty atmosphere inside the bell-ringing chamber. I've been forced to use project funds to purchase two identical replacement machines on the second-hand market as there seems to be no modern players available at a sensible price that allow continuous recording from external video sources. This is far from ideal as I've lost confidence in Philips equipment in recent years. Nevertheless, I'll be popping one up into the cathedral tower to swap over our equipment in one of my forthcoming lunch-hours, so hopefully I'll be able to pull off a few more videos than have otherwise been possible recently.

Eggs-changing comments (Video)

Because so many of you watch our webcams from all over the world, it's rare we miss knowing about interesting moments up our peregrines' nest platform. It's the comments you leave that tell us and others just what's going on hour by hour. If you don't already do so, it well worth checking out the comments that others leave. They add so much more topicality to each post.

For example, on Thursday AnnieF. left this observation:

Well I've just spent at least 8 minutes watching the falcon doing her utmost to persuade the tiercel to give her the eggs. He was crouched over them, his head to one side and so low it was almost touching the gravel, and she at one point bent down too, so they were almost beak to beak! He was extremely stubborn, but eventually, at about 13.24hrs., he gave in. He didn't seem very happy, but she wasn't going to take no for an answer this time.

Egged on by a follow-up comment from KarenAnne in USA, I dutifully nipped out on Friday lunchtime and climbed Derby Cathedral's 82 steps to the half-way point where the bells are rung. This "Ringing Chamber" is where our equipment and video recorders are located. Reviewing what AnnieF had seen, it was clear that our  female falcon had actually spent a total of 14 minutes trying to chivvy the tiercel off the eggs! You'd have been bored by the whole sequence, as there was a lot of standing around with our female chirruping gently at him from time to time. But this is how it all ended.. . .



And we'd have missed stuff like this had you not told us.

Leaving Comments
To view comments scroll to the bottom of each post. The number of comments left already is shown in red. Click this to open a Comments Window. You can add a comment of your own in the box at the top right, or simply scroll down to read others' comments. Recent ones are at the end.

If you decide to write your post, remember that we discourage off-topic remarks and inappropriate language (lots of schools read this blog, you see).
Then, you'll be asked to re-type some letters to prove you aren't a piece of spamming software, and invited to select an identity for your post. Whilst we currently allow Anonymous comments, but this may well change. So do consider signing up to get an ID that Google's Blogger system  recognises.  There is normally a delay whilst comments await moderation. This task is shared between Derbyshire Wildlife Trust and Derby Museum staff (both in work and at home). So between us we try and keep any delay to an absolute minimum.

To report events that you think others would love to know about, do please leave a date and time. We have about 4 days before our recordings get over-written by new footage. (Local time is shown at the top of each webcam picture)

We may keep your comments as evidence of the project's success and economic impact. Many of you have left some great comments already. So, if you've made a special trip to Derby, shopped or stayed in one of our nearby Hotels, or simply changed your attitude towards wildlife and become a convert to the cause of conservation, do feel free to tell us. Although our blog stats show us that by far the majority of blog readers are in Derby or the London area, it's great to know where individuals live if they're leaving us these kinds of comments. It's up to you, of course, but never give too much away on a public site, like an address or make comments that an employer or indeed other person might take exception to

Second egg (and the kids are back!)

Our second egg arrived sometime around 2pm today. Here's a screen shot when they first came into view.

Meanwhile, a juvenile peregrine was reported by a couple of viewers, one of whom said they had seen it this morning come onto the nest ledge, then get shoo-ed away by one of the adults. At lunchtime today this young bird came back to the tower top, where we caught the image below. It has much browner plumage on its back than our adults, and vertical streaks on its breast, rather than horizontal ones. No coloured ring could be discerned in the image, but we do know that one of our birds last year managed to lose its ring (which is most unusual). So we don't know if this bitrd is one of ours or not, though this is most likely to be the case. It happened in 2007, and it has been reported elsewhere, that juveniles from the previous seasons may return and investigate the new nest, or even help feed that year's developing chicks.

Egg-cellent News

(Newsflash: 2nd Egg now laid. Images to follow.)

So, were we all caught out? I was. Our first egg appeared this morning at 5am precisely, surprising most of us by being a day or two earlier than expected. How do we know the precise time? Well, just watch the video and see for yourself!

Perhaps it's because our falcon is now quite an experienced old bird, but the time it took her to lay this egg seemed much shorter than on past occasions.  Just an hour and a half after laying her precious egg, the male flew in to let her fly off for a few minutes. This was his first close contact with the egg, and he immediately lay on it to keep off the morning chill.

But when the falcon returned it was clear that he did not want to relinquish his prize position. She, so much larger than him, stood on the edge of the platform, trying to oust him with gentle chirrupping calls. Be he stood his ground, head bowed over the egg, and after a minute or two she gave up and flew off, as we can see in the video below.

And Then There Were Three - or Four?

With three peregrine chicks now hatched, we're wondering if we'll have the full clutch of four eggs hatched by the weekend, or whether this is it.




Our local media have been asking the same question, too. Yesterday I was asked to do two live interviews on local BBC Radio Derby and a phone interview with a reporter from our local newspaper. So it seems that interest in Derby's peregrines is still as strong as ever. The advantage of live interviews is that one gets a chance to give credit to all the parners in the project - Derbyshire Widllife Trust who do so much and Derby Cathedral who let us do it in the first place!

The new Flickr photo pool for webcam watchers to upload the moments they capture has already proved far more successful than I could have imagined. So many superb moments have been captured and placed there that its overwhelming. Jenniferwindridge captured the screen shot above at 19:45 and posted it to our Group Pool. At the tme of writing there now 55 pictures had been uploaded. Click on "more" to the lower right of the set of thumbnails to view more images in the pool.

Or turn on your favourite background music, sit back, and enjoy a melange of recently uploaded images using Flickr's Slideshow facility.

Below I have embedded a few of my favourites that you've uploaded so far, making the job of adding images to this blog so much easier and more efective than ever it was before!. Click each image if you want to view the picture on Flickr and see who uploaded them. I wonder how long it will be before we definitely answer the question posed by the last photo.











And finally, here's another chance to see our egg-nibbling stop-motion video which was created from a series of stills yesterday, shortly after the first egg had hatched.

Egg number three!

(Almost) right on cue - and the third egg is laid. That man Colin knows his peregrine breeding biology for sure!

And his prediction for egg number four is 12.30 am on Tuesday...not the best of times for us UK-watchers!

Thanks to Coconut for the picture.

The female laid three eggs in 2006 - her first breeding season we feel sure, 4 in both 2007 and 08.

Nick B (DWT)

Egg No 4

We have confirmed that we now have four eggs! Well done to "Mum". From comments left it seems to have been first seen around 19:40 local time on Friday evening.

Thanks to everyone who emailed pictures. This one is from Martyn Williamson in South Yorkshire. Please, please don't send any more for now as there's now a danger my work "Inbox" will overflow over the weekend! It's great proof of how many of you are keeping a close eye on Derbys birds.


Shown below is yet another amazing peregrine mating sequence we managed to record a few days ago. It was taken on 29th March, a day after the first egg was laid on the Derby Cathedral nest. It was 05:30 in the morning, and only just getting light. The sound is faint, as our microphone is located on the nest camera, some 20metres lower down - but you can hear it also picking up a bit of the dawn chorus over Derby city centre.




(New visitors to this blog may wish to read an overview of the peregrine project, or have their names added to our mailing list for major news items.)

Egg No. 3

We have three eggs now. This photo was taken at 10:30 local time (now BST, as our clocks moved forward an hour last weekend from GMT).

Last year four egs were laid, but only two hatched. Despite this, the parents tried to keep the two new chicks warm whilst at the same time incubating the non-viable eggs for a considerable number of days. Eventually one got broken on the nest and - if I remember rightly - the shell was consumed by the female. The fourth got broken during the short struggle by our ringers (or banders, as they're called in the US) to safely capture the eyass (young chick) for ringing.

In answer to a number of recent questions left in "Comments", Nick Brown (DWT) recently wrote the following. His answers are well-worth repeating here:

"Loads of questions! Here's a few quick answers: By starting incubation right away, owls produce young of different ages. This is an adaptation to a fluctuating food supply (vole and mice numbers are well known to cycle from abundant one year to scarce the next). Often the smaller chicks die (or are eaten by their bigger siblings) and the brood size is reduced to match the food supply. Peregrines by comparison have a much more reliable food supply and usually rear all their 4 (even occasionally 5) young. So synchronised hatching makes sense.The reason the peregrines are covering the first and second eggs is to keep them warm (during what has been a cold snap of weather). Serious incubation - when she gets right down and opens up her hot 'brood patch' on the eggs -won't happen until at least the third and probably the fourth egg is laid.The last egg is often a bit smaller than the first three, so probably is slightly less likely to produce a strong youngster than the others. Some birds sit on addled or infertile eggs for weeks after the 'expected' hatching date. However, if say two of the four eggs hatch, the parents will start feeding these immediately while continuing to brood the other two eggs (and the small chicks). This happened last year on the cathedral. Gradually they just ignore the unhatched/dud eggs and focus their attentions on the two chicks."

Egg No. 2

A second egg was laid sometime early on Monday morning. Our male promptly sat on them until noon, leaving our female peregrine falcon high up on the projecting lead gutter on the top of Derby Cathedral's tower.

So on the right is the first picture we were able to capture but, over in Holland, Froona has been watching far harder! She beat us to it, getting the picture below up on her blog well before we did, and it was Karen Anne in the States who kindly told us that she'd posted it. So I've just stolen this picture from Froona's blog to show every else. What a crazy world it is - it just shows the network of peregrine enthusiasts who are avidly watching every moment of this year's peregrine breeding season in the Northern Hemisphere.

Many thanks also to those who left comments on the blog to report the appearance of this new arrival. Following a remark from one reader about how annoying it can be to have everyone's comments appearing in reverse order, we've now added a box in the left hand side-bar to let you see the five most recently added comments. Look under the "2008 Photo" and simply click on that comment to go direct to that blog entry and its feedback. Please let us know if you find this helpful. To leave a comment you will need to type in a series of code letters which is aimed at stopping spammers. You can aways email direct at peregrines@derby.gov.uk

(New visitors to this blog may wish to read an overview of the peregrine project, or have their names added to our mailing list for major news items.)

Newsflash: Our First Egg!

Sometime around 12.30 this lunchtime we saw that we had our first egg. A couple of hours previously the male had been busy nest-scraping and the female was on top of the tower. (My thanks to Doug Stapleton for emailing in the news to peregrines@derby.gov.uk)


The clip below is made up of three sequences, filmed over a 10 minute interval this lunchtime. First we see the moment the egg is actually laid (notice the contractions of her body), and within 3 minutes the male flies in to inspect the "new arrival". But she was having none of this, and defended her position until he flew off again. After a few more minutes we get our first view of the egg.

It was a hectic afternoon today, made more challenging by the disappearance of the key to the cathedral's key cabinet. This put the tower out of bounds to us until late this afternoon when a relief verger came in to work, carrying a spare key. Then the process of capturing and editing the film was further halted whilst Radio Derby did a short interview for their news slot, followed by another with the Derby Evening Telegraph (local newspaper). Of course, it's great to know the wide interest in the bird's progress, and we'd just like to warn everyone not too get alarmed when they see the egg apparently abandoned on the nest ledge. Eggs will be laid at roughly two day intervals, after which incubation will begin in earnest. Until then we may see the egg or eggs left unattended for an hour or two. The parents will no doubt be close at hand -watching out for ravens if they have any sense. Note too that the red-brown egg appears completely white under night-time infra red illumination.

We had three people who suggested times closest to when our first egg was laid. But some made their predictions nearer to the start of our competition others – so I reckon they all deserve to win: Lyndsey, Chesterfield (1st April); Andy, Derby; (Friday 6am morning) and Veronia B in Cornwall (Friday morning). It’ll be a bit crowded on that rope when we abseil down in the autumn to clear out the nest! Well done everyone.

We've had a couple of YouTube video clips sent in by Ian Mackinnon, taken just after lunctime on Friday from outside the Cathedral, using a telescope and a mobile phone as a camera. Further video



(New visitors to this blog may wish to read an overview of the peregrine project, or add their names to our mailing list.)

Gone Walkabout

A visit to the webcams this morning might have alarmed some viewers. Where is the second chick? Thanks to our other camera, it was easy to see that our chicks are now starting to wander about more freely than ever. One walked over on its own to the other half of the nest ledge on derby cathedral's tower before Mum came to collect it. Of course, the other chick then felt abandoned and began calling loudly!

We received some interesting comments on Friday from a viewer, saying that around 7pm local time they had witness one of the parents consuming one of the old eggs. Certainly, one does seem to have disappeared, and we may be able to check our film footage and capture exactly how this happened.

A couple of dozen video clips have just been posted off to Devon, at the request of the BBC, where Bill Oddie, Kate Humble and a huge team of technicians are preparing for this years TV extravaganza - "Springwatch". Broadcast each night on prime-time UK television, it uses live cameras and specialist photographers to capture and broadcast the marvels of British wildlife. Whether they will want to use our footage is another matter. But time will tell.

Breakfast Feed

For the last few days the chicks have been fed about 20 minutes either side of 08:00 BST (local time). This is a good time before heading off to work to watch for clear views of the chicks and the two addled eggs. Feeding is now getting more frequent during the day. Our chicks are already much larger and will soon lose those charming looks they first had when they hatched. (That's the wonder of the Atkin's diet.)

All our webcam pictures include a local date and time at the top, so those of you watching in different time zones - and we know there are many - will be able to work out how far ahead or behind us you are.

We do try to answer any questions included in viewers' comments - and we're starting to get quite a few now, and some helpful feedback too, but we apologise for any delay between posting and publishing. There's no need to repost - any delay is the result of the moderation process we use. We aren't online 24/7, though sometimes it seems like it.

No Change: - still just the two chicks

By late Saturday evening we still had just the two chicks. They had a good feed around 8pm, possibly from a thrush, though most of the time the chicks remain out of sight under Mum, who is still sitting on both them and the eggs. According to the books, it's rarely more than 48 hours between the first and last eggs hatching, so it seems increasingly likely that the remaining eggs may not be viable.
In Columbus, Ohio none of their four eggs have hatched this year, so now they've all been removed in the hope this may trigger the adults to try again. But it does seem rather late in the season. Do visit their blog, if only to see the stunning photo of their female, Scout, taken as she was defending her nest site as the addled eggs were removed.