Arctic Derby

The weather remains bitterly cold in Derby. While the heavy snowfall of last week has been beaten down (and doesn't look much now, eg in my photo), it is increasingly difficult to walk along pavements which have become very icy and compacted. Similarly side and country roads are rather lethal!
Tonight's temperature is set to plummet to minus 10 degrees at best.

This afternoon both adult peregrines were on the Jurys Inn signs, one on the sunny south facing side and the other round the corner on the East facing side. They are well equipped to cope with cold weather. There's plenty of prey about. Today I found feathers of a teal and beak of a snipe below the tower.

Other birds are beginning to struggle.

This woodcock visited a suburban garden in North Derby one day last week. Remarkably it was managing to find earthworms in the soil below the snow. You may recall that woodcock are one of many species of wading bird that the peregrines take and that in December 2009, we managed to capture footage of one of the peregrines bringing back a live woodcock to the tower at 11pm at night, proving that these birds hunt after dark using the floodlighting.

Nick B (DWT)

Ps. A big thanks to Barbara M for providing the excellent photo, taken through her window.....

Wet and cold (updated)

Today (Saturday) in Derby started very wet and cold with little likelihood of any fledging. With continuous drizzle, the Watchpoint was eventually cancelled, as was announced in our comments.

Just look at those youngsters...bedraggled or what! Thanks to Roger Sharp for the photo capture. At 10.30am one of the adults sat, soaked through, in a stony alcove high above the nest site. It was so wet that it was impossible to see its features, let alone determine its gender!

To try and make up for no Watchpoint, here's a video clip from early yesterday morning before all the rain started. Many of us have seen how both parents and juveniles can turn their backs to eject a stream of waste matter away from the nest site, but this clip shows an interesting variation on the same theme! Note, too, the flurry of white feather from the nest as wings are flapped.




Here are some recent screen-captures of our four, sometimes rather bedraggled, young peregrines taken this weekend 6th/7th June 2009:
Sara6768


by rejsharp


by Marski2009

More, hen?

Judging by comments left, there have been some great feeds witnessed over the weekend. A couple of these on Monday have featured a rather large waterbird - a moorhen (Gallinula chloropus), probably taken from the River Derwent corridor which runs just past Cathedral Green. The picture below was captured at 10:00BST (local UK time)

A phone call this-morning to the construction company working on Cathedral Green confirmed that watchers in Derby are now able to access a small part of the "hard-standing" to use telescopes and so forth without blocking the pedestrian walkway along Full Street. The recent warm weather in the UK (up to 30C yesterday) had prevented part of the new surface from hardening properly. We're sorry we misled people who expected more space late last week.

The heat has also posed a challenge for our peregrine parents. Preventing the chicks from overheating in direct sunlight is an absolute priority, as they can easily die if left unprotected for any length of time. We see Mum adopting a strange pose slightly away from the chicks so they are both sheltered from the sun but still with a ventilation gap so that she herself doesn't overheat them. By mid-day the problem has disappeared as the sun will have moved round the tower, creating sufficient shade.


One of our chicks started moving around the platform today - perhaps others have witness this already, but it was a new event to me. Once we get lots of movement we may switch over the camera feeds.

Just a reminder that, whilst you can hear sound on our video clips, there is no audio on the Streamdays webcam feed itself as these are static images. I'm afraid this is something that would only be available with live video-streaming.

(Finally, in case some readers may have pondered the significance of the title of this blog entry, I should explain that "hen" is used in some parts of Britain as a term of endearment, often by an older person to a younger woman. I apologise for my awful sense of humour!)

Follow these links to:

• read an overview of the peregrine project,
• add your name to our mailing list
• find out about buying the brand new DVD: "The Peregrines of Derby Cathedral")
• see many more pictures on Froona's very detailed blog over in Holland (both from our webcams and from many others around the world)

Windy Morning

This morning, a blustery SW wind was certainly almost blowing the flag on the tower top off its pole! Both peregrines were on the east side, sheltering. the male was tucked in by the lead gutter, the female, initially on the platform, had moved up to sit on the same ledge as the male but half way along when I returned to look at them with the telescope.

The photo shows a fieldfare in this lead gutter which the birds use as a 'fridge'. Fieldfares don't breed in the UK but come here from Scandinavia and East Europe in the winter. The lower photo shows a close up of the bird. The photos were taken last February on the day the cameras were fixed...there's been a lot of water under the bridge (or should that be fieldfares in the gutter?) since then of course!

NickB

Watch Point Roll Call and thanks

With the Watch Point now at an end for 2007, I would like to thank all the volunteers who have helped down on Cathedral Green since we began back in mid-May. My job of organising the rota has been made easy, having such a splendid team who so willingly have given up their time to stand for hours on end, helping visitors to see and learn about the falcons.

Here's the list of helpers and I trust I've not left anyone out! In no particular order, they were:

Brian & Margaret H, Celia H, Sue J, John B, Sue and John H, Allan H, Ian & Judith F, Lizz D, Margaret K, Steve & Ann R, Andy & Chris M, Dave R, John B, Malcolm H, Tony G, Nick M, Tony S, David P, Ian H and also Wildlife Trust staff Sarah D, Sarah S, Nell T and Philip P. Plus a further note of thanks to Andy and Barry, regular watchpoint attendees, for their help on many occasions.
I'll post a total of donations received early next week - there's still some to bank yet.

We've certainly had a very wide range of people visit us over the six weeks. Local people have predominated but we've also had visitors from all parts of the UK plus tourists from Italy, Spain, New Zealand and Holland, to name but a few. We've had people aged 2 to 90, people on crutches and in wheelchairs, people who have never seen (or in some cases never even heard of) peregrines before and others who have seen them all over the world.

Add these thousands to the web cammers and the TV, radio and newspaper audiences and we have already engaged with a huge number of people across the world, giving peregrine conservation wide coverage and also putting Derby firmly on the global map!
Keep the blog comments coming won't you? Tony G, Nick M and I have tried to answer your comments and questions but no doubt you'll have more yet....
In return we'll endeavour to keep you informed of any news of our falcon family. We just need some better weather don't we? It has rained all day today without ceasing! Perhaps Sunday will be better......

Nick B

Withdrawal symptoms

Without wishing to encourage navigation away from this blog, but feeling sorry for those of you with severe withdrawal symptoms, try this Polish website at: http://www.bocianyonline.pl/kamery_en.html

which has links to 39 webcams throughout Europe, nearly all set up on white stork nests.

My favourite however is Number 38 (see photo), the only web cam set up on a black stork nest in Estonia, a country still full of rich wildlife habitat. There is streaming video plus sound. The three chicks have grown fast since I last looked about 10 days ago when they were all white. The weather looked pretty awful this morning, as it was here (though this afternoon the sun has come out in Derby at last!).

What a contrast to our peregrine chicks! These youngsters have very long legs, sharp, pointed beaks and of course they are in a huge nest made of sticks and moss and built by their parents. Black storks are summer migrants to Europe and, with luck, these young will soon be flying south with their parents to winter in Africa, though they'll face numerous hazards along the way.

P.s. Whereas white storks nest close to (and usually on top of) human settlements as you will see, black storks are much rarer and very secretive birds. They nest deep in forests or in caves on cliffs, sites which are usually impossible to locate...so watching this nest is a real treat!

Enjoy it while you can!

Bank Holiday Monday

Another cold, windy day with showers too. Arriving at the cathedral I was greeted by an enormous queue of people which encircled the cathedral - could they have come to see our birds? Sadly not. They were waiting to board some 90 coaches for the big football match at Wembley this afternoon!
Meanwhile, we watched the female pluck some prey and feed it to the chicks. The male joined her on the platform briefly, as viewers of the webcam between 10-11am may have seen. Later, he flew off, making a very distinct alarm call at another male peregrine which was circling the tower high up. Was this an intruder or perhaps the young male from last year's brood?
While on the Green, we met a man who was filming his grandchildren fishing on the river nearby two weeks ago. He spotted a great spotted woodpecker flying upstream which he started to film. To his amazement, it was chased and eventually caught by the male peregrine right in front of his eyes! He managed to capture the whole event on film and we hope he'll lend us a copy so we can share this observation with you....

Wet and windy Sunday

A very wet day in Derby today, with the female again doing her best to keep the chicks dry. Meanwhile, a visit to the cathedral this morning revealed that the male has tucked himself into a snug, dry crevice in the top of the window above the nest. Alright for some eh?
Naturally we were forced to cancel the watchpoint. The forecast for tomorrow isn't much better either......

Wet or what?

No doubt, everyone watching the web cam this afternoon will be concerned about the chicks welfare as the brooding bird becomes wetter and wetter in this heavy and persistent rain which is blowing straight at the East face of the tower, where the platform is situated.
Peregrines traditionally live and nest in very exposed mountain and sea cliff habitats and are use to getting wet as well as brooding chicks in heavy rain...though they obviously don't like it any more than we do! For now, we can only keep our fingers crossed....
The platform has many drainage holes and these were checked in February when the gravel was renewed, so we trust there will not be any build-up of water beneath the chicks.
It will be interesting to see if the parents attempt to feed the chicks while this rain persists. No doubt they have stashed some drier prey somewhere on the tower in case of weather like today's when hunting is presumably out of the question. Attempting a feed might not be a wise move right now......
Identification of the sodden corpse that is partially lying under the brooding bird is problematic but if you think you can identify it, please add a comment to this blog entry. (Subsequent comments suggest a thrush - thanks for that).
Postscript: At about 18.50pm the rain stopped and a feed took place. Two dry-looking chicks were seen begging for food. So all's well though I guess we must abandon hope that the two remaining eggs will hatch.
The brooding falcon still looks incredibly wet now that she has settled back on the chicks....it will be a long, uncomfortable night for her!