Natural World magazine feature

Natural World is the national magazine of The Wildlife Trusts, a working partnership of 47 local wildlife trusts across the UK - the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust is just one of these 47. So this magazine is seen by the total membership of the wildlife trusts nationwide - about 756,000 people.

The winter edition, just about to be mailed out, has a peregrine photo on the cover and a three page feature on our Derby peregrines inside, written by yours truely, with many excellent photo's to illustrate it.
If you are a wildlife trust member, your copy will reach you shortly with your normal membership mailing.

If you are not - why not join your local trust or ask for membership as a Christmas present?

Go to http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/ or, for the Derbyshire WT, direct to http://www.derbyshirewildlifetrust.org.uk/ for details.

Otherwise, you can buy a copy of Natural World for £5 (incl. P&P) within the UK. For the price of overseas copies please email enquiries@derbyshirewt.co.uk. There are only limited copies available, so first come first served! Phone us on 01773 881188 and order your copy direct (and a DVD or two as stocking fillers too maybe?)!

Meanwhile, our birds have been taking snipe and woodcock - usual autumnal fare for them......

Nick B (DWT)

Only 56 preying days to Christmas......

Just a quick reminder that you couldn't think of a better stocking filler than our DVD 'The Peregrines of Derby Cathedral' now could you?

Even if you have your own copy (which I'm sure most of you do by now) there must be friends or relatives who'd be interested to snuggle down by a fire on a cold winter's day and watch what happens up on the cathedral tower in the heat of summer?

The price now is just £6 per copy excluding postage and packing - so do get on the buzzer and speak to someone at our Derbyshire Wildlife Trust office (01773 881188) and they will post one to you at the drop of a hat (or of a prey item if you prefer!).



Speaking of prey, our peregrines are now turning their attentions to birds that have moved down from the north and east to spend the winter near Derby.

One such is the golden plover and I found an almost complete corpse under the tower only the other day. I also read that there is now a flock of 500 of these birds feeding in fields about six miles from the cathedral and just beyond the city boundary - well within the peregrine's hunting range.
The photo shows the tail of a golden plover - what beautiful feathers these lovely birds have!

Lapwings, fieldfares and redwings will also feature on the menu shortly I have no doubt.....as will night-flying woodcock and maybe some rarer night-fliers such as quail and some coastal waders moving from one side of the UK to the other.....we'll just have to wait and see what turns up!

Nick B (DWT)

Children and peregrines

Last summer many schools used the webcam images to show their children what was happening on the cathedral tower....and there is so much educational learning potential quite apart from the sheer enjoyment of watching peregrines at the nest!

The drawings here are by infants from Brigg Infant School in South Normanton.

Their teacher, Helen Naylor has really used the peregrines in so many ways with her class - and the artwork they have produced is great for children so young, even if the cathedral (and the birds) appear in some interesting and lively

shapes!

Last summer the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust organised some family events at the cathedral aimed at children between about 7 and 12 and these went down very well.

The Wildlife Watch Club, the junior branch of The Wildlife Trusts, used our Derby peregrine story in their national magazine more than once.

If you have children of this age then why not join the Trust as family members or just join your children into Watch Club? Details are on the Trust's website at http://www.derbyshirewildlifetrust.org/.

The national Trusts magazine, called Natural World, will have a feature article about our peregrines in the next issue which is due out shortly, so if you belong to the Derbyshire or another county trust, keep an eye open for that.

Nick Brown (DWT)

Ps. A peregrine is back on East Mill in Belper today, just above my DWT office window in fact (though I can't see it except from the outside....)

Cooling down, warming up

This morning, with a chill in the autumnal air, both adults were warming themselves in the early morning sun that was shining onto the East face of the tower, the male on the middle gargoyle and the female out of sight of the webcam on the lead gutter just behind the camera, as seen from the ground.

Under the south face of the tower were several feathers of a teal, easily identified by the green sheen on the secondary flight feather that I picked up among many browny breast feathers. Teal are small duck which are often taken by the falcons between now and spring when this species frequents local gravel pits and reservoirs.

(The photo by Jon Salloway shows the female last summer with prey).

The last couple of days have been very warm and sunny here, perfect September days in fact and exactly the type of weather you want coming back from a holiday in SW Spain where mid day temperature were in the mid 30s!

We did see at least one peregrine while we were down there (perching on a pylon) but the main attraction was to watch the exodus of the many different types of birds of prey as they leave Europe bound for African warmth, accompanied by big flocks of white storks, much smaller groups of the rarer black stork and other species such as bee eaters, swallows and swifts.

The southward migration of these birds is focused on the short sea crossing to Morocco between Tarifa and Gibraltar. Over 100, 000 honey buzzards pass through between late August and the end of September with similar numbers of black kites and smaller numbers of short toed and booted eagles, egyptian vultures, harriers, sparrow hawks, ospreys etc. If you happen to be there on a day when the birds are moving in numbers it is really an amazing spectacle to watch. One day, apparently within an hour and a half, over 900 short toed eagles and 1000 other raptors flew over one of the watch points which have been set up to monitor this twice yearly passage.

Back here in Derbyshire it is still possible to see hobbies, especially the young birds which are honing their flying skills before they too set off bound for southern Africa. To watch these birds high in the fly sailing about catching insects is a treat to return home to. They'll soon be gone as the days get ever shorter.

Nick B (DWT)

September Update

Our webcams are fairly quiet now that this year's young have grown up and moved away.

But there are still things to see. Passing Derby Cathedral in the morning, it's likely that I'll spot one of our adult birds perched somewhere on the ancient stone tower.

It's nice to see the bird in real life, and then arrive in my office a few minutes later and be able to continue watching the bird over one of our webcameras. Other have been lucky and watched a bird feeding in full view of our tower-top camera, sometimes even at night.



In these quiet days it is rare that both adults are seen in view together, so today it was nice to be able to catch this shot on one of our nest platform cameras. The nest scrape is obviously still being maintained in a good state, though it will be many months before it gets used for nesting again.

Anyone keen to watch nesting peregrines right now will have to visit Frodocam, or the Alcoa Anglesea webcams, both in Australia, or catch up on a lot of other world-wide peregrine news on Froona's blog, over in Holland.

Follow this link for more information on our own peregrine project, including technical details of how our set-up operates.

We'd like to take this chance to wish Canon Nicholas Henshall from Derby Cathedral all the very best in his new post in Harrogate, Yorkshire. Nicholas features on our Peregrine DVD and is a well-known Radio Derby presenter. He will be much missed.

In Memoriam

I hope readers will forgive me if I take a moment to note the passing of a family friend whose interest in poetry and peregrines gave pleasure to many. Ray Woodland passed away in his eighties earlier this week. A member of "PM Poets", he allowed us to reproduce one of his pieces last year, and it seems fitting to share this with you again.

The Peregrine

Swifter than swallows and straight as a dye
an elegant peregrine hunting will fly,
bright barred is his plumage, but Nature decreed
that it's hidden from laggards in bursts of sheer speed,-
he falls on his quarry as bullet from gun
and strikes ---- all is over as soon as begun,
then homeward in triumph, his prey in his claws
the bird of the whirlwinds flies on without pause
to his eyrie on cliffside or cathedral ledge
to devour his catch standing bold on the edge
in view of the watchers who envy his skill, ---
immune and indifferent, he does what he will.

Ray Woodland (1924-2008)

Logie follows Beatrice south

Logie and Beatrice are female ospreys, birds which migrate between West Africa and their breeding areas in north Scotland. Both have satellite transmitters fixed to them thus enabling their every move to be followed.
Beatrice has just crossed the English Channel, having paid a brief visit to Rutland Water while the Bird Fair was running there last Saturday. Logie has just set off from her nest, 15 days later than she began migrating last summer.
Go the Roy Dennis' website to follow these birds and others that he has tagged (including a honey buzzard which will also soon set off south too):

http://www.roydennis.org/index.htm

Nick Brown (DWT)

The photo is by Roy and shows Logie.