Invite to Join, great news from Rutland Water and a new Video Clip!

On 20th November, 180 days after it was ringed, one of the juveniles reared last summer was seen alive and well at the Egleton Nature Reserve at the west end of Rutland Water, the biggest reservoir in England. The bird had moved 61 kilometres in an East South Easterly direction from Derby.
The bird, a female, was ringed with colour ring 030 on its left leg. Steve Lister, a bird watcher visiting the reserve, saw the bird and another birder was able to read the number on the ring so a big thanks to them for taking the trouble to report the details to the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) who are responsible for bird ringing in the UK.

This is an exciting report and shows that our juveniles do move away from Derby in the autumn. The photos are by John Wright (see his video clip of her below).

030 standing on a post at Egleton Nature Reserve at
Rutland Water, photo by John Wright

030 in flight - photo by John Wright

030 showing her orange ring, photo by John Wright

030 even had a go at a short eared owl, as you can see in John's photo. There is a flock of lapwings behind:

030 (left) short eared owl (right) with flock of
lapwings behind. Photo John Wright, taken
at distance....

Steve Lister has emailed us explaining more about 030:
He wrote:

"The colour-ringed juv female Peregrine has been virtually resident at Rutland Water since late September: I first noticed the colour ring on the 29th and, along with many others, have seen it regularly since. The bird has spent long periods sitting around on the islands on Lagoon 4 of the Egleton Nature Reserve. Nobody was able to read the ring until John Wright managed it with his top quality equipment in early November".  

Video clip of 030 at Rutland Water

John Wright has kindly sent us a video clip of our young female. It is on Dropbox and the link is:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/j4mgyrr383zkxcp/AAAci0n99V8TmRBakW3A3eTMa?dl=0 .

It seems the quickest way to access the video is to right click over the photo and click on 'Open in a new window'.

Nick Brown, Project Team

False alarms

Over the winter, we usually get a few phone calls telling us that a peregrine has been found dead in Derby or perhaps been trapped in a building - and we had the latest of these last week.
Not knowing whom to ring, the person who found a dead bird of prey and thought it might be a peregrine rang the local radio station (BBC Radio Derby) who then contacted the wildlife trust.
When I emailed the guy he said he was a couple of miles from the cathedral when he had found a dead bird. Fortunately he had taken a photo and it was clearly not a peregrine but a male kestrel.
Here it is:

Male kestrel by Ian Lay

 In previous years the bird has always been a sparrowhawk. On one occasion, we received a call from the manager of the biggest shopping centre in Derby, then called the Westfield Centre, to say that some bird of prey, possibly a cathedral peregrine, was trapped inside the building and couldn't get out.

The red circle marks the spot  where the sparrowhawk
was trapped inside the glass frontage some 20 feet up!

When I went down to look I discovered a sparrowhawk that had obviously been chasing some prey or other and had flown in low down through the large glass doors. When raptors do this, they invariably fly up as high as they can get, to get away form the milling crowds below. This bird was on a rail at the top of the very tall glass frontage. A small cherry picker was brought in and I was taken up close to the bird which by now was somewhat exhausted. Moving towards it very slowly I was able to grab it from behind and bring it down to the ground.

The exhausted sparrowhawk finally in hand

Watched by a growing crowd of shoppers, I released the bird up into the sky and it flew off none the worse for its shopping trip!
(Note the bright orange eye - peregrines have dark eyes....).
On another occasion someone found a dead bird of prey thinking it was a peregrine. When I got down to investigate it too proved to be a sparrowhawk:

Dead sparrowhawk

On another occasion a kerfuffle from inside an upstairs chimney in the cathedral centre itself suggested a trapped bird was inside. When we opened up the back of the grate, there was a very sooty pigeon. It too was dusted off and released.....
So, as yet, no dead Derby peregrines...but the next phone call could just be one. Let's hope not!

Nick Brown
Project team

Ps. If you are a first time visitor to the blog, welcome.
Please note that the web cams are currently not in the best of conditions.
They have mostly been up there, exposed to the elements, since 2007 or '08 so it is not surprising that they are now struggling. We have bought some new cameras using our recent lottery grant money. Nick Moyes is configuring them and will get them in place before the season starts (February/March).
Also note that to save money we have also shut down Camera 3 until the spring.
If you want to see some great video clips of the highlights from the project's past (courtship, feeding the chicks etc) then we have over 50 video clips on You Tube that you can watch. Scroll down the right hand side of this blog to find the links.

Gear on the move down

Today, Nick Moyes moved all the various technical gear and gyzmos down a floor inside the cathedral tower. This involved turning the whole system off so we apologise if you were getting a black screen today!
It took two of us about six hours to make the move down. Unplugging everything was no simple task and each lead had to be labelled to ensure it went back in the right socket!
Fortunately the wiring Nick had employed back in 2007 when the web cams were set up was long enough to be fed through the ringing room floor and down into the room below.
Our new home is bigger than the previous one and well supplied with sockets too!
Clearly there may well be some teething problems (and the pictures seemed to be somewhat blurred at first) but we hope to have these sorted out when we next do a maintenance abseil....please bear with us.

Nick M figures out the wiring in
its new location

Finally, as if by magic, a picture appears on the monitor. There's some tidying up yet to be done but at least the system seems to be working.

The monitor in position with an old display board from upstairs
adjacent. This will be replaced before the summer.

A problem with Stream 4 seems to be caused by some external factor interfering with the signal as it travels from the tower to the Silk Mill Museum or, more likely, from the museum across to the council's IT.

One possible cause is a new hotel being built further down Full Street behind the cathedral. 

The new hotel which may possibly be getting in the way of the signal
with the nave roof in the foreground

Sorting this out is beyond our control but we have reported the problem - so fingers crossed.

We are aware of the ongoing problems with the camera that looks horizontally above the nest (towards Jurys Inn) and we plan to address this before the start of the new breeding season.

The project team
Ps. Stream 3 is off air until the spring.

Another one bites the dust

NOTICE: We have been asked to relocate our IT equipment into a different part of Derby Cathedral's Tower. This necessitates our webcams going offline at times. We hope to undertake most of this work on Monday 23rd November.


This time it isn't one of our peregrines but a juvenile bird from St. Michael's Church in Exeter, fledged (and ringed) in 2013.
It was found dead in Halifax in the spring with five lead shotgun pellets inside its body. The whole story has just been made public.
Read about it here .

X-ray of the Exeter peregrine clearly showing round lead
shot in its neck, base of skull and leg

It is of course illegal to injury, harm or kill any bird of prey, with special penalties if you kill a bird on Schedule One - and the peregrine is on that Schedule because of its rarity.
Sadly, peregrines are persecuted both up on the hills and moors where they come into conflict with the grouse shooting industry and also in more urban/lowland situations where pigeon fanciers sometimes decide to take the law into their own hands.
Where this bird was shot at is unknown but it seems more likely that it may have been shot as it flew over the grouse moors to the south of Halifax rather than in Halifax itself. We'll never know.
In Belper, a town in central Derbyshire, where peregrines have nested for a few years, earlier this year the resident male was found dead, again with lead pellets in its body. So we can surmise that many other peregrines suffer a similar fate but their corpses are never found.
Thanks to Lorraine for alerting us to this recent case and to Nick Dixon in Devon for the full details and the x-ray photo. Nick has been a constant supporter and source of wise advice to us here in Derby right from the beginning of our project in 2005/6.

Petition to ban the use of lead shot
The use of lead in shotgun cartridges is a subject much in the news at the moment. There is a petition to call on government to ban it completely since it does so much harm in the environment. Please sign the petition here. To read about the background (why it needs to be banned) please see Mark Avery's excellent blog here  - though you will need either to scroll back several posts or use the link saying 'Lead' on the right hand side of his blog. There are also concerns about anyone eating game shot using lead, a Mark explains.

Thank you.

The project team

Ps One bit of good news today is that the estate in Norfolk (Stody Estate) on which corpses of several buzzards were found (and proved to have been poisoned by the estate's gamekeeper) has been heavily fined.
To read about this see Mark's latest post.

Time for a read

We are now in the quietest period of a peregrine's year: the breeding season is long gone, the 'kids' have departed and the nights are drawing in. There's not much to see on the web cams either especially while the 'pud cam' that looks horizontally across the ledge above the nest is out of operation (it will be fixed sometime soon we hope).
So, maybe it is time to read up about these iconic birds and check back through video clips to remind ourselves of previous breeding seasons.
As for books on and about peregrines, here are a few I can recommend:

The Peregrine by J A Baker, 1967, with a new edition by New York Review Books.
Superb nature writing, a classic for sure. It tells the story of peregrines in winter on the Essex coast but in such a wonderful way that the book is difficult to put down.

The Peregrine Falcon by Derek Ratcliffe (Poyser Books 1980). This is undoubtedly the 'peregrine bible' written by someone who studied these birds in the wilds of Scotland and England and who was a supreme scientist. The text is very readable and well worth the effort. There are many fine vignettes by the wildlife artist Donald Watson.

Falcon by Helen Macdonald (Reaction Books, 2006). Well written, this book describes how the peregrine has been used in falconry for centuries, used a heraldic symbols and even worshipped as a god. A surprisingly entertaining read.

Urban Peregrines by Ed Drewitt (Pelagic Press 2014).
A comprehensive account of how peregrines have taken over our towns and cities. Our Derby project gets several mentions too.

Top Gun of the Sky by Martin Bradley Ceratopia Books 2013. A thin volume aimed at children but with some excellent graphics.

The Peregrine Sketchbook by C F Tunnicliffe (1996, Excellent press). Tunnicliffe lived and painted in Anglesey and his wonderful studies of cliff nesting peregrines were made at South Stack.
I'll put up a further post before the year end about peregrines and art - but there's no better place to start than with this marvellous book.

To see video clips look down the right hand side of this blog to find 'Archived Clips'. Or go to the You Tube site and search for either Derby peregrines or UKVC57 which also brings them up.


Nick Brown
Project team member

Skype For Schools

Teachers! Would you like one of our Project Team to drop in to your school classroom to answer questions on Derby's Peregrine Falcons. We're willing to travel anywhere in the world to chat with you!

We can offer schools a free, 30-40 minute classroom chat via Skype on some Mondays or Tuesdays. These need to be pre-booked and can be tailored to best meet your class needs.

Children from Brigg Infants School in Derbyshire made these drawings
of our first Skype classroom session 

The activity would be teacher led, and requires preliminary teacher-expert hook-up to plan and schedule the Skype activity. We would expect your class to have already done some peregrine falcon activities, and to have watched our webcameras on Derby Cathedral. Pupils would be encouraged to think about what questions they might put to an expert. For best effect, these questions would already have been sent to us in advance by the classroom leader. 

We also suggest a preliminary Skype hook-up with the teacher a week before to discuss the teacher’s needs, and to agree on how best to approach the session. 

Our Skype session is best scheduled immediately after a school break or lunch period. This allows time to ensure everything is set up and working before the class arrives. With pupils positioned in front of the school webcam, the teacher could invite each one to come up, singly or in pairs, to ask their question. This is not to preclude spontaneity, but is intended to ensure a well-structured session. 

Our volunteer Team member would be happy to explain the background to peregrines starting to live on Derby's Cathedral, or the current position in the peregrines’ life cycle, and what might be expected to be seen on the webcams in the weeks/months ahead.

Following the Skype session, teachers could encourage pupils to do  follow-up work, such as KS1 children doing drawings to show how they class hook-up went, and the responses they got from the Project Team.

This is a new activity for the Derby Cathedral Peregrine Project, and is volunteer run. So we may have to give priority to local schools if demand is high.  But for now we can offer Skype sessions only Mondays or Tuesdays, most easily between the local British time of 9am to 10pm. 


Download a  Session Plan  Or contact the Project Team volunteer to discuss availability: peregrines@derbyshirewt.co.uk

Words of thanks

As our three year Heritage Lottery Fund grant comes to an end, it is time to celebrate what has been a very successful project and to say a 'thank-you' to the people and organisations involved.
We'll do this over at least two blog posts.....so here goes with part one!
First, way back in 2011, Tim Brooks at Derbyshire Wildlife Trust coordinated and led on putting our bid for £49,000 together. While he is no longer with DWT, we owe him a debt of gratitude for his hard work getting the bid approved - never easy these days!
Our success with the bid was announced in May 2012 and work began in June of that year.

HLF Grant launch June 2012: the Deputy Mayor of Derby, a Cathedral
Quarter ranger, Nick B, The Dean and an HLF trustee.

Nick Moyes was taken on as our 'Technical Consultant' - though of course he has been the key player in this project right from the beginning - and much more than a technical adviser too!
Nick set to work in 2012 redesigning the blog, making a massive improvement to its previous format. Cathedral Quarter, a partner in the project kindly helped by designing a new logo and header for us (see the header above!)..
He also dreamed of getting a  new wide-angled camera...but more of that later.

Nick Moyes in abseil mode

Project Logo

Meanwhile, over the winter of 2012/13, we advertised for a Peregrines, People and Places Engagement Officer and Ian Layton was selected. Ian began (part-time) work in January, quickly getting to grips with what he was being asked to do.

Ian Layton - an engaging fellow!

He set about contacting both minority communities in Derby and also groups and institutions catering for people with disabilities.

Over the following three summers, he drew many new audiences to our project. Too many to name here, the photos below give an idea of the range of people who learned about peregrines and their presence on the Cathedral. Ian also ran the series of Watch Points each summer - assisted by our wonderful band of volunteers!

Ian (left) talks to and with refugees at Derby Refugee Advice Centre

Eritrean lad with harris hawk at Peartree Library

Eagle owl meets local resident at Peartree Library

Never too young to be wowed by a peregrine!

Woodlands School hearing impaired unit
visit at Watch Point

Lad from St Benedict's School sees his
first peregrine falcon

A busy Watch Point 2015

Engaging people at a Watch Point event
Note Ian at the far end on his knees!

In addition to this work, Ian organised the production of a number of excellent Schools Education Resources boxes which have proved very popular with schools across the city and county.

Education Resources box contents displayed

While Ian was carrying out all this engagement work, Nick Moyes completely redesigned the blog layout and design. He also fixed a wide angled camera to the back of the nest platform which gave excellent views of the birds: 

In the first spring with the new camera in place, it snowed
heavily just before the eggs were due

Three eggs and a tiny chick, May 2015 as seen
from the wide angled camera

Nick also created a display to go in the window of the Cathedral cafe in Irongate. This allowed passersby to see a live streaming view of the nest, a mock up of the platform with eggs and gravel and a time lapsed display of the various stone faces which peer down from the tower;

                                                               Cafe window display

Nick also maintained the IT and cameras, abseiled down each spring to clean the platform and adjust the cameras and also collected the chicks for ringing each May.....stalwart work!

More about the project and how the HLF grant enabled us to do so much more than we would otherwise will appear in a later blog post.
For now though - a hearty thank-you not only to Nick Moyes and  Ian Layton, but also to the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Cathedral staff (especially the vergers, Jackie Croft and Rachel Morris) to Cathedral Quarter (especially Ashley Lewis) and to a host of staff at the Wildlife Trust who helped Nick and Ian in so many different ways throughout.
We must also thank our splendid Watch Point volunteers who stood out there in rain and hot sun and helped so many people to see the birds 'up close and personal' through our telescopes. You are all Champions Without you we wouldn't have been able to run Watch Points at all!

Nick B (DWT)

    

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