Third Camera and First Video Pictures

It took a lot of late nights and a lot of missed lunch breaks this week - but I think this shot makes all the work of wiring-up Derby Cathedral and preparing a mount for our third camera completely worthwhile. (In fact I have to admit: it's been rather fun). It shows our female peregrine taking a meal on top of one of the three gargoyles on the east side of Derby Cathedral's tower. Directly below her is the peregrine ledge, and at 17:15 this evening we were excited and delighted to watched her feed before flying off to land below the platform, whilst our male bird stood still and quiet in the nest scrape. Click the image below to view the video clip from YouTube.



The camera is still being tested, and from time to time you may see sudden changes and maybe wonder why the links aren't correctly labelled. Please bear with us whilst we consider the best way of supplying three video feeds via two webcamera pages. Of course, we could easily arrange for a third video page, but first we would need to find a sponsor willing to offer us £150 for a three month webhosting contract.

Of course, acknowledging sponsorship or donors gifts is very important, and right now we would like to thank Acam Technology Ltd of Prime Enterprise Park in Derby for donating this little dome camera to our project. It meant we only had to purchase the special cabling we needed, and this support has helped us spread our limited resources much more effectively. We recently purchased a new video recorder with some of the donations made on Cathedral Green last summer, and I hope we can soon bring you the first video clips.

The camera looks northwards across two of the three gargoyles. In daylight we can see towards Rivermead House, thankfully one of only two tall residential buildings in our city. Immediately beyond it we see Darley Park, and in the far distance the undulating countryside around Crich. In the extreme lower right-hand corner we catch a glimpse of St Alkmund's Way, part of the busy inner ring road that skirts the city centre. The night-time view is not so clear, and the picture unfortunately contains a lot of flare from the infra-red illuminator bouncing back into the camera lens. We'll see if we can make this better just as soon as we're able, but there may not be much we can do owing to its close proximity to the stonework. The horizonatal line of bright lights you see is highway lighting along the A38 - the outer ring-road that runs northwards around Derby.

Finally, although this really deserves a diary entry in its own right, we would like to draw your attention to a fantastic new peregrine blog run by a Dutch enthusiast called Froona. Her site seems to be unique in that it compares the progress of a number of peregrine webcams around the world, and her use of captured images from their webcams is brilliant for seeing what other pairs of birds are up to. In Rome for example, they already have eggs, whereas we don't expect ours until the end of March/early April. (I just wish I had the time to watch them all!)

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

Third camera takes a step closer.

I took a few hours off work yesterday to thread video cables up the four hundred and fifty year old spiral stone staircase of Derby Cathedral's tower. This done, it was a delight to be able to test out what everyone has been calling "Pudding Cam" - a dome camera generously donated to us by Acam Technology Ltd in Derby.

It was only a temporary installation, so there's no live images to show yet, but here's the first test picture. It is designed to sit on top of one of the lead gutters and should give us a great view across the "gargoyle ledge" at the very top of the tower. Our thanks go to Steve and the folks at Acam Technology who found us a camera that would fit through the tiny hole in the guttering. We only had to pay for the power supply and cabling, so the cost to the Peregrine Project was effectively halved. Follow this link to see more on our tests with Pudding Cam.

We also renewed our contract with Streamdays today, so broadband users should now be seeing pictures refreshing at least every six seconds. We hope that Streamdays might be able to speed this up a little more for us, though it could involve a reduction in image size - we'll see. Visitors do need to have Flash installed on their computers, and we hope to hear from dial-up users that they're still getting pictures OK. (Please remember to close your browser after watching, rather than leaving it running in the background.)


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

Live Peregrine Video Stream now in Derby’s Silk Mill Museum

Thanks to sponsorship from Capita IT Services, we've now got a computer monitor showing our peregrines in the front shop area of The Silk Mill – Derby’s Museum of Industry and History.

It's just 20 seconds away from Derby Cathedral, and so visitors to our Peregrine Watch points can now pop in to watch live streaming video of the birds and check on their progress. These pictures show all the action - and sound, too. Although we recognise that the Streamdays service that internet users currently see is very effective, the live video and audio really is something else. Why not pop in when nest platform activity is low and find out if our chicks are asleep, or just hiding from you!

It takes just a few moments to saunter over from the Peregrine Watch Point to The Silk Mill museum beside the River Derwent. Whilst you're there, why not look out for one of the Vickers-Vimy engines that powered the first trans-atlantic flight by Alcock and Brown in 1919? Derby is the design and manufacturing base for Rolls Royce aero-engines, and the Silk Mill has an impressive collection of engines, right up to the huge RB211 jet engines.
Of course, nothing equals the majesty of a falcon in flight, but sometimes man's efforts can be impressive, too! (Admission to all Derby's three museums is free.)

Moving About

No doubt everyone has realised that the two chicks are moving about now and that they may only be visible from the 'other' camera.....so don't panic....they're still on the platform - and visible!
The day brightened up after a wet start and both adults took advantage of the sun and wind to soar high above the cathedral this afternoon, accompanied at one point by a passing sparrowhawk.
The family events went well and the children had great views of both adults through the telescopes. They also made model peregrines, watched a short powerpoint presentation and played food chain games on Cathedral Green. Catch 'em young!
We have had more feedback including kind words from someone watching in Hawaii. Thanks and welcome!
More good news on the sponsorship front today too, with Capita UK now offering us more staff time and £1000 towards our financial needs. More on this to follow. Incidentally, visitors to the watchpoint have donated over £200 already - many thanks if you have put a pound in the donations box!
Finally, BBC TV's Springwatch website has links to our web cams on its home page. Let's hope they decide to show some of the video footage we have sent them sometime during the next three weeks.

Our First Sponsor!

We would like to welcome Capita as the first sponsors of the Derby Cathedral Peregrine Project. This is an exciting moment for us, as Capita are Derby City Council's IT support agents, and nationally have a huge role in supporting key business operations.

Until now, our project has utilised their expertise in wireless connectivity and server configuration in a normal customer-client relationship. i.e. someone pays for their skills, and this has been the City Council.

But now we hear that they are keen to support our project by offering us free technical support. Not only that, they are keen to meet the cost of a second "Peregrine Watch" banner which will more effectively promote and publicise our manned Watch Points on Cathedral Green, in both this and future years. The Watch Points are now running every day in good weather from 10am-2pm right to, and perhaps beyond, fledging in mid-late June. (see blog entry for May 15th)

We don't expect Capita to be at our beck-and-call every minute of the day, but it does mean we can now pursue some IT developments this season to give us a more rugged service without incurring costs we simply can't afford. Not only that, we can talk together about future IT opportunities for next season - something we've already started to think about.

If you would like to donate to the Peregrine Project, or discuss sponsoring us in some way, please contact any of the three Project Partners. Very soon we will have a "shopping list" of the essential items we will need to purchase once we've returned the items loaned to us this season.