Waiting Patiently, an update & a welcome

Update 27th March: things seem to be hotting up now, judging by the flurry of recent comments.....
For the falcon to lay a week earlier than last year is probably as much as we can expect of her - so hopefully something will have materialised by 29th?
Meanwhile Grantham has its first egg and Chichester has four.

Update 22 March: Notts now have four eggs and Norwich Cathedral has one (access via Camscape.com I think) and Bath too (since 21st).
Ps. Our bid to the lottery (HLF) was being decided today but the date has now been put forward to mid April when we stand a better chance apparently.

Also welcome to all Derbyshire teachers who are newly discovering our web cams and blog as a result of our presence at a big schools eco-conference on Friday. Hope you like what you find! Nick B/Nick M. (See one encouraging teacher feedback comment already....)

No eggs yet for Derby's peregrines, although nearby Nottingham have already laid three eggs on the side of their university building.

Derby Cathedral's own nest scrape looks well-formed, and we've seen plenty of courtship and mating activity, which you can view by scrolling down to earlier posts to watch the videos. Last season, Derby's peregrines laid on 4th April, though the earliest they have ever laid was on 23rd March 2009.

There's so much happening behind the scenes, we barely know where to start. At the moment you'll see no difference, though we have some great plans and hopes for good news from our application to the Heritage Lottery for additional funding to support our work. We'll tell you more about it during that long, dark tea-time of the soul (a.k.a incubation).

Nest scrape with tiercel 20th March.

The tiercel as seen by our other webcamera

More mating moments

Another amazing video came out of Derby Cathedral this morning.
I'd gone to check for interesting recordings, but found none worth retrieving. But just as I was setting the equipment back to standby, before heading down the spiral stairs from the bell-ringing chamber, I heard a loud eee-chupp, eee-chupp  over the live microphone feed.

Switching the camera controls over to the right-hand side of the nest platform, I saw our male standing there, calling. It sounded like a typical welcome, so I wondered if our female was flying in to land. Switching the camera feed back over to the other side, sure enough, there she was on the ledge down below the platform. She had a submissive posture, and looked ready to mate. Switching back, the male had now flown off, so I switched back once more, just in time to see him fly down to the ledge she was on and mate briefly with her before flying off. He soon reappeared on the nest platform, whilst she continued to call to him for some time.

I knew the video recorders were running, so this was clearly going to be a fascinating sequence to have captured.  I edited out the three minute sequence, burnt it to DVD, and headed back down the tower stairs. I couldn't resist nipping out to look back up at the nest ledge from Amen Alley. There I met a couple of visitors to Derby to whom I chatted for a while. I told them they'd just missed seeing the birds mating, and they told me this was their first time visiting Derby, though they'd read our blog and watched the birds via the webcams. Just then, Margaret, one of the Cathedral Quarter rangers came down Amen Alley, and we all stopped to look at the birds and chat about our plans for this coming season. Just then, our male flew down and mated with the falcon once more. We couldn't believe our luck!

Now, we can't promise every visitor to Derby a sight like that, though you can nearly always guarantee to see the peregrines somewhere close by.  What we can do is promise you a warm welcome and the chance to catch up with the news from a host of peregrine watchers who regularly lurk around the Cathedral, binoculars in hand. So, if like our couple this morning, you visit our city for the first time, don't hesitate to ask anyone else you see to point out where our world-famous peregrines are to be found.

Video-fest (Mating and Night-time hunting!)

Favourite lookout point - high up on Jurys Inn, Derby.
photo by superbrad

What a day for capturing amazing videos!

On Saturday I once again climbed the spiral stone staircase inside Derby's cathedral, part-hauling myself up with the thick hawser-laid rope that serves as a useful handrail for weary visitors like me.
Eighty two steps later and I was half way up the tower and inside the bell-ringing chamber where our internet and recording equipment is located.

I wasn't expecting much on the recorders. OK, there had been a couple of blog comments left by readers to the previous post to say they had seen some sort of night-time activity on March 1st. Perhaps a prey item had been brought back alive, they suggested; it was worth checking out whilst I was in town. But I didn't hold out much hope.

First I went through the daytime recordings, skimming forwards at 5 minute intervals, looking for first signs of mating, or further courtship activity. Suddenly, in one frame, a tiny black dot appeared against the white wall of the distant Jury's Inn hotel. But on the next frame it was gone, so what was it? Running through it again at normal speed I realised we'd caught on camera the moment when an adult bird was flying up to alight on top of the huge blue lettering that spells out the Jurys Inn name. This is one of their favourite haunts when they aren't on the cathedral tower itself as it gives them a commanding view over their nest site, ensuring no interlopers try and take it over. OK, it was at the limit of the camera's resolution, but it was nice to see the tiny dot flying up to land where I had so often seen it in the past.

To see the tiny speck of a bird, you'll probably need to double click to open it in YouTube and then view it in full screen mode by clicking the small icon on the lower right side of the frame.

First mating
Setting the DVD recorder to burn this brief moment to disk, I began reviewing footage captured by the other video recorder. This time what I found was even was even more spectacular. It was footage from 1st March. Our male peregrine (the tiercel) was sitting on the platform edge with the falcon down on the stone ledge below him. She looked to be in rather a submissive posture, so I ran through on fast-forward to see what took place as I suspected she might be ready for mating. And then, sure enough, it happened. After a brief preen he looked down at her, then set off out into the Derby air, obviously did a fast about-turn, and came back into view to land on her sturdy back and mate briefly with her. This is the earliest date on which we've seen our peregrines mating. Previously the earliest report was on 8th March 2009, but of course we have no real idea when these multiple matings actually begin. We're just lucky if we see them. But it does bode very well for a successful breeding season once again this year.




More evidence of Night-time Hunting
And to cap it all, a further look back through recorded footage to find the activity that blog readers, Sue and Helen both reported around 11.30pm on 1st March revealed yet more amazing night-time hunting activity. This time it was clear that our peregrine was alert and watching the night skies over Derby. It flies out and returns a minute or two later with its prey which is clearly struggling, though is not sufficiently clear to enable us to identify the species (but it does seems to have big feet). Rather gruesomely it start plucking its prey without the neck-bite we've witnessed a number of times before. So there's a bit of a struggle before it is finally subdued, plucked and dispatched. So this footage adds to our 'world-first' video recording we captured back in December 2009 when a woodcock was brought back alive late at night. It simply proves what the scientists were saying from the prey evidence - that peregrines falcons are well capable of taking advantage of urban light pollution to hunt for prey long into the night over our towns and cities. Peregrine experts, Nick Dixon and Ed Drewitt, believe the prey item is a female teal that has been taken by our male. (Compare the size against the female bird shown in the video clip in the previous post and you'll notice how much smaller he is than the falcon shown here.)



But all-in-all an amazing day - and well worth the climb up those ancient stone steps.

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.

Snow and who's eating what.....

The snow yesterday (4th) certainly filled up the nest platform though it has mostly thawed today. In the surrounding countryside, there was a good five inches of snow and if you were feeding the birds in your garden and cleared some patches so the birds could get to whatever you put out, you'd have had plenty of visitors.

In my garden, blackbirds and fieldfares came for the apples I threw out, tits, sparrows and finches for the seed, a woodpecker, a nuthatch and some starlings to the fat blocks and collared doves, dunnocks and robins on the bird table and pecking about underneath the feeders.
Fieldfares certainly love apples and will come into gardens in cold weather if you put some out. I had 41 of them on Saturday, though they didn't stay very long, there being more birds than fruit! BTW, the fieldfare artist is Mike Warren, who lives in Nottinghamshire just to the east of us.

Fieldfares are taken by the peregrines but since they come to the UK in their thousands each winter to escape the cold of Scandinavia, their numbers are hardly dented by this minor mortality. Redwings, their Viking cousins, are also taken by our birds. They too winter in the UK in many thousands though they don't eat apples. They prefer berries if there are any left.
Joyce S, one of our watch point volunteers, tells me she had redwings in her Derby garden

feeding on holly berries last week. All the holly berries round me have long been eaten so redwings here have been turning to those of ivy, a nutritious source of food.
Feeding birds directly by putting food out and indirectly (by making your garden wildlife friendly) sustains birds and other willdife and gives lots of pleasure too. Well worth considering if you've never done it before!

Nick B (DWT)

Ps. Robert Gillmor is the redwing artist.

Pps. I confess the snowy cathedral photo was taken last year...I didn't get down today.

Good turn out for Tony

Last night's service and presentations to Tony as he left the Head Verger's post went very well.

There were well over 200 people present, a much bigger congregation than is usual, made up mostly of people who had come especially to thank Tony for his hard work, help and unfailing good humour over the eleven years he's been at the cathedral.
A small band of 'peregrine people' attended (including one staunch supporter coming over from the West Midlands!). Nick's M and B presented Tony with a framed photo of the male standing on the platform edge waving at the assembled crowd below. This shot was taken by Graham Whitmore in 2007 and he has kindly allowed us to use this and other photos over the intervening years.

In addition, Tony was given some wine and a copy of J A Baker's beautifully written book, The Peregrine.
The lengthy introduction, by Mark Cocker, even mentions our Derby Cathedral birds!

Thanks to everyone who contributed to these gifts. photo copyright Graham Whitmore
Nicks B and M