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!

More than a Flickr of Interest

It's clear that spring is on the way now. The days are lengthening, and snowdrops are showing their  bright flowers in gardens and parks across Derby. The cool morning air is filled with the call of a multitude of birds, all  re-establishing their territories and preparing for the fast-approaching breeding season. On top of Derby's ancient cathedral the 2012 breeding season is also clearly underway. A number of you are helpfully clicking on the "comments" link to report times when interesting breeding behaviour is being seen. This forms a useful  guide to everyone else as to what is happening, but it also helps the Project Team look for and retrieve the best moments from the two video recorders installed inside the tower.

Local photographers and webcam watchers are also helping understand what's going on by uploading their photographs and screenshots to our dedicated Flickr site. We don't always highlight images posted there, but do take a regular peek at the latest images people from all around the world have seen and posted there. One local photographer is Ian (aka Superbrad) who regularly posts the most superb pictures to our site, like the one below.   We are looking up to the top of the tower on the side where our this webcam is positioned. It's here that we often see roosting, feeding and mating behaviour, and Ian has captured our falcon flying in, with the smaller male (tiercel) just visible on the stone grotesque in the extreme left side.

The video below shows just one of many moments when our two peregrines display to one another, and it's great to get a good side view of the falcon after the male flies off. We can clearly see how much larger and heavier she is than the tiercel. The date was 23 February.

The following day we captured this moment of nest-preparation. Look at how the nest scrape is created, with the bird lying low and pushing back with his legs. The fussing around with small stones is not actually part of the scrape-making process, and may simply be some sort of evolutionary hang-over from the full nest-building activity of most other birds, or perhaps nature's way of reinforcing the link to the nest site.



If you want to upload screenshots from the webcams yourself, or post photos you have taken outside Derby Cathedral, follow the link to our Flickr site on the top left side of this blog, and follow the instructions shown there in the introductory description. Alternatively, read this.

Valentine's Day Videos

Head-bowing courtship behaviour - see video below

A climb up Derby Cathedral’s tower this afternoon yielded two lovely video clips, clearly marking the start of the breeding season.

First, we see the falcon (female bird) on the nest ledge where she had just arrived. It’s 8th February, 7:30am local time (GMT) and dawn is breaking, and the cameras are still in night-mode. She spends a considerable amount of time moving slowly around the nest scrape, picking at debris and possibly consuming small pieces of grit. It seems unlikely that she was picking at insects as it was far too cold and early in the season for that.


Next we see the typical courtship routine of head-bowing and eee-chupp calls from the female. We expect to see the pair mating on the tower during March, and as a precursor to this, we will see a lot of courtship activity. Typical of this is the head-down eee-chupp sequence that follows. It was 11th February, and our male has just arrived at the nest ledge and the female flies in, landing just off camera. They face each other, heads bowed, with the female making an “eee-chup, eee-chup “ call, with the male also calling in the same way. During this display the male may remain absolutely motionless for many minutes. But eventually it seems that his nerve gives in and he suddenly flees the nest, leaving the female behind. Though not seen on this occasion, she often then moves slowly forward and stands inside the nest scrape.


We ask that any webcam viewers seeing interesting activity to make a note of the date and time and to post a comment on this blog. We won't be able to retrieve every one of them, but we can use your feedback to quickly obtain and post as many interesting clips as we are able, given our resources.

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.

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

Video Clips

Here are all the video clips from one entire year in chronological order.
They are a mixture of YouTube and Blogger-embedded video clips.

3rd Feb 2009 Adult peregrine arrives on sunrise (07:30am) to reinforce its claim to its nest site during one of the coldest winters in Britain for 15 years.



4th Feb 2009 An adult peregrine pulls prey item out from the snow on the nest platform, with its mate on the ledge below.



19th February 2009 Platform maintenance work to give juvenile birds a better grip on the nest ledge whilst exercising their wings prior to fledging.



27th February 2009 Courtship activity (Food exchange and ee-chupping)




8 March 2009. Mating Sequence (1 )


16 March 2009 Mating Sequences (2)


16 March 2009 Mating Sequences (3)


7th April 2009 Male at night on top of tower



22nd April 2009 Changeover on Nest - female takes over from the male


29th April 2009 Stop-motion video of female nibbling empty eggshell.


29th April 2009 18:45pm First glimpse of first egg hatching. We then see Mum nibbling at the free eggshell. Turn up the sound to hear the faint call of the young chick.



1 May 2009 An hour in the life of a peregrine, compressed into 75 seconds as a new Jury's Inn nears completion in Derby city centre. (watch for the crane driver!)



1 May 2009 Chick no 4 hatches.


2nd May 2009 Chicks being fed - they are between 1 and 3 days old


5th May 2009 Chicks being fed - now clearly able to support themselves



20th May 2009 Ringing (banding) the four pergrine chicks



5th June 2009 Chick demonstrates an unusual way to do a poo. Feathers fly as the young birds exercise their wings.



9th June 2009 The first departure of a juvenile in 2009 was clearly an accident!


9th June 2009 Fledging activity


18th June 2009 A juvenile female pushes the adult male out of the way on top of Derby Cathedral's Tower (with apologies for the poor sound quality on this clip)



Follow this link for video clips from 2007

Follow this link to view all our YouTube video clips from past seasons too.

You Can Ring My Bell . . . (updated with video)

Derby Cathedral is offering people the chance to try bell-ringing tomorrow (Saturday 27th).

During an Open Day people will be able to tour the tower, watch bell-ringing demonstrations and try ringing one themselves.

Doors to the Cathedral tower will be open from 10am until 4pm and admission is £2 for adults and £1 for children (over eights only).

For details of other forthcoming events at Derby Cathedral, follow this link to the What's On page of their website.

Shown below is a superb new video taken by John Salloway on 22 June, showing three juveniles being fed. This is taken from John's own blog, for which many thanks. He does warn viewers that it can get a little gory - but as we keep saying on this site, that's nature.

Derby Peregrine Falcons - Videoscoping. from Jon Salloway on Vimeo

Chick Ringing 2

Here is a video of yesterdays ringing of the four peregrine falcon chicks on Derby Cathedral. It took place at 7pm last night, and was quickly over. Our thanks to the two volunteer ringers - Ant and Martin - who have many years of ringing experience between them. Ant believes we have two males and two females, based on their size and degree of development.



Even before we had left the tower the female was back at the nest platform, though was not surprisingly a little unsettled to begin with.


by Marski2009

Hello World!

Watchpoints are now underway at Derby Cathedral's newly renovated Green - subject to reasonable weather of course. Follow this link for all dates on our Watchpoint Calendar. Do come down betwen 10.30-1.30 to see Derby's peregrines for yourself. They might even wave to you, as one did for local photographer, Colin Pass, recently!

Our four chicks really are growing rapidly. Ths mornng one went for a walk-about on the nest platform and gave a good display of its developing flight feathers.

It will soon be time to try and ring our own birds which we're hoping to arrange for later in the week (weather permitting) . Worcester's peregrines have just been ringed and have featured on BBC TV

________________________________________

Here are some shots uploaded recently to our Flickr Group Pool

16th May :

by Karen Anne, U.S.,


by Jennie, Hong Kong


by Ann ( Canada ),

15th May:

by k_15H0r3


by falconquester2001


by pocd1


by waynerawson84

Feeding Time

(Blog updated 12:45-see end)
Here are two videos showing our new peregrine chicks being fed. The first clip was recorded on 2nd May, with chicks between 1 and 3 days old. The second was recorded on 5th May, and their increase in size and ability to support themselves is clear to see. We'll see a rapid change in their appearance each day from now on, though frequent webcam watchers may well not notice the difference as readily as less regular visitors, to whom these changes may be more noticeable.






Thanks to cocotags for the photo below -just one of many who uplaoded some super screenshots this week.


Warning: The title of last Sundays blog entry is very timely as the Project Team have been made aware that a frequent visitor to Derby Cathedral Green has recently been pretending to work for Derbyshire Wildlife Trust. He may attempt to borrow money or pretend to solicit donations for our Project. The police are involved and we can confirm that we would not accept cash donations there unless during official Watchpoints, where Trust staff or other helpers are clearly identified. We don’t want to encourage further discussion/speculation here, or describe the individual concerned (he is known to us), but anyone with concerns is invited to contact the project team directly or leave their contact details with the Cathedral vergers for us to get back to you.

To make a donation in person, we recommend you hand it in at the vergers office inside Derby Cathedral, or to staff on any of our Museums’ reception desks. Cheques are always safer than cash, and should be made out to Derbyshire Wildlife Trust and labelled “for Peregrine Project".

Chick Flicks

(Updated Sunday 12: 45 UK time

It seemed that half the world was watching yesterday evening as chick no 4 made its appearance. I think this screenshot captures the exact moment of appearance at 20:48.

Below that is a stop-motion video of this 20 minute episode. And thanks for everyone's comments and feedback, too. No doubt here will be other images posted on our brand new Flickr photo pool from many watchers around the world. )

The three other video clips shown below of our new peregrine chicks were retrieved from the recording equipment inside the bell-ringing chamber of Derby Cathedral’s ancient tower on Friday 1st May. They go back to 29th April when our first egg hatched, and lead up to today's exciting and long-awaited events


The first gives a glimpse of the first egg in the process of hatching at 18:45 on 29th April 2009, with the chick still half inside the egg. We then see Mum nibbling at (consuming?) the free eggshell. Turn up the sound to hear the faint call of the young chick. (Duration: 2min 51sec)





The second shows the two 12-hour old chicks being fed around 10:40 on 30th April 2009 (Duration: 2min 36sec)






The third shows Mum taking a well-earned break, leaving now three chicks alone on the nest platform for a while. Aren’t they cute at this stage? Just wait a few days and boy, do they change! This was also captured on 30th April, but at 18:37 local time. (Duration: 1min 25sec)




Flickr:
This group is really taking off, with some fantastic webcam screenshots now uploaded from around the world. Thank you. There have been some problems reported with people not being able to view all the pictures. This can be remedied by joined the Group itself, after reading and agreeing to the group rules, of course.

Comments left on the blog today have suggested that anyone uploading pictures needs to ensure they have their privacy setting so that their pictures are “open to all". (I hope I've got this right!)

Update:
Latest image taken at 19:20 on Saturday evening shows the fourth egg with some definite cracking around it.

We have hatching - two chicks by early 30th April!

We now have two chicks hatched out. The picture above was captured by Larelle_M_R on 30th April at 3pm.

What follows below is a blow-by-blow account of developemnts on Wednesday evening as we got more and more evidence of first one, then a second chick hatching out. The shell-nibbling video clip is worth watching out for. We hope to bring some proper videos of these moments to you in the near future.


We have evidence that our first egg has hatched!

About 19:15pm this evening Nick M (who has sound) heard distinct rasping/cheeping noises and kept watching until he got some evidence, but pretty soon the female covered the eggs up from view again.

Checking back on the captured images we can show the first glimpse of a broken egg with what certainly looks like the chick still inside. Click the image to see a larger version.

(Note: This blog entry was updated at intervals throughout the evening as we get more information and images during the course of the night, culminating in a second chick appearing around 11pm.)

About 20:25 we had superb views of the half shell which the female then began to chew. We plan to bring you a stop motion video later this evening of her eating the egg. This is an important way for mother birds to restore some of their denuded calcium stocks, and has nothing to do with keeping the nest tidy as someone asked earlier this evening. ....so now we want a clear view of the first chick...but she's not giving us that option at present!

Derek Ratcliffe in his famous reference book, says that peregrines nibble at egg shells but don't really seem to devour them...they just crumble and disappear in little bits. In one year we did seem to get very convincing evidence of the egg being consumed, rather than dropping away. Here's a stop motion video we've put together from webcam images captured earleir this evening.

We're already starting to get our first pictures added to our new Flickr photo pool for Derby Cathedral Peregrines, so thank you and keep them coming!

This very first image of our first chick was posted by Jennifer Windridge on our new Flickr group which itself only hatched today - proving it was worth all the effort to get it up and running in time.


This next image was captured and posted by Dave Arrowsmith.

This image labelled "chick1" was posted by rajenkinson but it does look rather like at 23:01 it's captured the second egg in the moment of hatching, presumably with Mum taking a well-earned break for a moment.


And at 6.30 am today (Thursday 30th) there was a prolonged feeding by the female bird of two tiny white chicks with the other two unhatched eggs clearly visible.....it's going well so far!

Potter's Wheel

Our webcam feed is temporarily suspended over Easter.
Despite being advised this wouldn't happen, I'm afraid we have temporarily lost our pictures along with all other content and public servcies on Derby City Council's website. This is due to essential maintenance work to move our network servers from Derby to Birmingham - a very rare event indeed. Things should be back to normal by Tuesday 14th April at the latest.

Meanwhile, in the famous tradition of the BBC during the 1950s, we are pleased to be able to bring you the Potters Wheel Interlude. It was broadcast whenever there were breaks in television transmission.


(Thanks to YouTube user JFBridge for this clip.)

Whilst the cameras are down we are open to any questions or requests for information you may have about our peregrine falcons. Just post a comment and someone here will probably be able to answer them. We may use your questions to update an FAQ page that we're planning.

And here is a compilation of all our video clips published so far this season.

3rd Feb 2009 Adult peregrine arrives on sunrise (07:30am) to reinforce its claim to its nest site during one of the coldest winters in Britain for 15 years.



4th Feb 2009 An adult peregrine pulls prey item out from the snow on the nest platform, with its mate on the ledge below.



19th February 2009 Platform maintenance work to give juvenile birds a better grip on the nest ledge whilst exercising their wings prior to fledging.



27th February 2009 Courtship activity (Food exchange and ee-chupping)




8 March 2009. Mating Sequence (1 )


16 March 2009 Mating Sequences (2)


16 March 2009 Mating Sequences (3)



23 March 2008 Changeover during incubation. The male is on the nest and is encouraged to leave by the large female who calls and waddles over to take charge.


Follow this link to view all our YouTube video clips from past seasons too.

But February made me shiver . . .

It's been one of the coldest winters in Britain for many years, and the snow fell in earnest across most of England yesterday. It seemed the whole country ground to a halt for a few hours. (We're simply not used to temperatures as low as minus three Celsius, or snow as deep as ten centimetres!)



Up on the tower of Derby Cathedral our peregrine falcons' nest platform soon filled up, and the lens of our tower top camera was also buried in the white stuff. (If you've ever wondered why it's been dubbed "pudding cam" click here) But as is the way nowadays in lowland Britain, we rarely have to wait long before the snow and ice began to melt away. To peregrines, which are birds of mountains and cliffs, the cold and snow is hardly an inconvenience, and certainly something they can cope with well.

Dawn broke clear and beautiful this morning. And just as they now do on most mornings, one of our adult peregrines soon arrived on the nest platform at sunrise to reinforce its claim to this site. (07:30 local time) The misleading rufous red colouration you see on its lowermost feathers is due to the rays of the sun striking the east-facing side of Derby cathedral's tower. Click the play button to view the video above.

Nipping up the tower this lunchtime to check our video recording equipment, I was surprised to be greeted to a grey blur in the feed from "pudding cam", high up on the top. It made me wonder whether the bird was getting some benefit from the tiny amount of heat that this camera must generate - or perhaps it was simply trying to say "hi" to all our ardent webcam viewers out there. Perhaps some of you saw it peering out of your computer screens.

Update: Thanks to regular blog visitor, Lynne, who left a comment to say she'd seen some unusual activity on February 4th. We duly checked our video recording equipment for the date and time she'd said and retrieved the clip below of an adult peregrine pulling this prey item out from the snow on the nest platform, with its mate on the ledge below.




Nick Moyes
Derby Museums & Art Gallery

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Video Highlights

We shall have our work cut-out during our lunchtimes for the next few weeks, going up and down the Cathedral Tower to capture video clips. Our thanks to everyone who reported the times of key activity moments. This helped a lot.

Here are just three of many sequences captured on our DVD recorder. Click each image to play the embedded YouTube video.

First is a changeover revealing two chicks at 19:40 local time on May 4th.



Below is a clip of Mum leaving the nest platform for a few moments to give our first glimpse of three chicks at midday on 5th May, accompanied by the lunchtime bells of Derby Cathedral.


Finally, here's a tender feeding sequence, filmed at 20:15 on 5th May.



Note: Over the next few weeks if you think what you've witnessed on our webcams is a really extra-special moment that stands out above all the rest, and so worthy of capturing on video, do please tell us. Feel free to leave a comment, telling us what you've witnessed and why it seemed of great interest. If you tell us the UK local time it happened (this is visible on each webcam picture), it helps us find the right moment on our 24hour recording.

Because of the popularity of our webcams (6,500 visits today/25,000 pageloads), could we invite viewers to close their browsers when they've finsished viewing the web camera pages? This reduces the strain on the Streamdays servers - and I'm indebted to the guys there for sending out quick alerts to us whenever our own video server freezes.

Hatching Soon....on a DVD player near you

Well, not the eggs hatching of course, but an exciting new DVD called 'The Peregrines of Derby Cathedral' will be available to buy very soon. Jasper Films have been working since February, gradually putting together a 35 minute DVD, the sale of which will financially benefit our Peregrine Project. Here's a promo video to give you a taste of what's to come. (Just click the image below of peregrine expert, Ed Drewitt, to play the clip)

Featuring Chris Packham of TV fame (and a vice-president of The Wildlife Trusts), plus the local Nicks and Ed Drewitt, plus lots and lots of video clips from the cathedral web cams, this DVD will be a 'must have' for everyone who has enjoyed watching these amazing birds either via the web cams or from the ground. As well as telling the story of our Derby birds, it will feature footage gathered from all over the globe, adding peregrine sequences we can't get via the web cams (such as flight shots). Their musical sound track will surely add a sense of mystery and drama, too!

So, watch this space for news of the hatching (i.e. launch) and how you can get hold of your copy.

(For Wildlife Trust members among you, an advert appears in the new issue of 'Wild Derbyshire', DWT's own magazine, which should be with you any day now. New visitors to this blog may also wish to read an overview of the peregrine project, or have their names added to our mailing list for major news items.)

Nick B

Aren't Peregrines Perfect!

This year our three cameras and video recorders have captured some of the most intimate moments in a peregrine's life. We've filmed three mating sequences, as well as courtship and egg-laying, and there's much more to come. But thanks to comments left on the blog we were able to retrieve perhaps the most tender moment of all so far, when her fourth egg was laid on Friday 4th April at 19:52.

I don't think it needs any words from me. Just enjoy the video by clicking on the image below.

(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 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.)