A good read

Minor update: Happy New Year! ( We've reset our visit counter to zero.)

We've mentioned a few books on this blog over the years but possibly not J A Baker's classic, The Peregrine, first published by Penguin back in 1967 and reprinted many times since then.
Writing prose which is still regarded as probably the best to describe a wild bird and the habitat in which it was found, Baker became fascinated by the peregrines that wintered along the Essex coast where he lived.
Baker was neither a bird expert nor a professional writer, yet his book captures the essence of the countryside around him. He writes:
"I came late to the love of birds. For years I saw them only as a tremor at the edge of vision. They know suffering and joy in simple states not possible to us. Their lives quicken and warm to a pulse our hearts can never reach. They race to oblivion. They are old before we have finished growing."

Having just seen his first peregrine he writes:
"I have seen many since then, but none has excelled it for speed and fire of spirit. For ten years I spent all my winters searching for that restless brilliance, for the sudden passion and violence that peregrines flush from the sky. For ten years I have been looking upwards for that cloud-biting anchor shape, that crossbow flinging through
the air. "
Of course, the 1960s were the years when peregrine numbers plummeted due to the pesticide residues that accumulated in their bodies. This decline eventually brought an end to Baker's birds and his joy in watching them. He wrote:
"For ten years I followed the peregrine. I was possessed by it. It was a grail to me. Now it has gone. The long pursuit is over. Few peregrines are left, there will be fewer, they may not survive. Many die on their backs, clutching insanely at the sky in their last convulsions, withered and burnt away by the filthy, insidious poison of farm chemicals."

Baker went on to write one or two more natural history books. Perhaps he lived long enough to see his birds return to their former haunts. I hope so.

His book should be available in libraries, in some shops and doubtless on line too.
Nick B (DWT)

A different bird for Christmas? (updated)

Woodcock, Golden Plover, Blackbird and Redwing are all fair game this Christmas, it seems. Whilst many of us in the UK are planning to tuck into a turkey meal on the 25th, Derby's Peregrine Falcons have a more exotic menu lined up.

Derby Cathedral Tower is the second highest church tower in England, and a recent visit at the start of December to remove an object blocking one of our cameras revealed a wide selection of prey items are being taken this winter. Many of them are unusual species that most people would not expect to see in our city centre at all.

We know that our tower camera was blocked by the remains of a large Woodcock, as you can see above. We also have this bird on film, being brought back in darkness at 7.30pm in late November. We saw it's final death throes, so we know it was not brought in from a stockpile on a ledge elsewhere. Clearly, these peregrines are taking birds that are reluctant to fly in daylight and feel it is safe to move along our river corridors after dark.

It might also be worth drawing your attention to the tail feathers on the Woodcock. These have bright white tips to their undersides, making them very distinctive indeed. (A headless corpse and some feathers were recently handed in by AndyS. Thanks to this key identification clue, provided by NickB , these feathers and corpse also turned out to be Woodcock.)

So what else did we find? Well, NickB will probably have a close look at all the images taken on 1st December 2009, and we'll report back. Meanwhile, I think the prey list will probably end up look something like this (deep breath; all together now!):

• Four Golden Plover
• Three Woodcock corpses
• Two lovely Snipe
• One gorgeous Redwing
• and a Black-bird on the north side.

A pleasant Christmas to all our friends and blog readers around the world from:

Nick Moyes, Nick Brown, Tony Grantham

(Derby Cathedral Peregrine Project Team)

Update 1: A woodcock was seen being brought back to the tower around 10.45pm on Dec 20th, and is still there at the time of this update (21st Dec). It has caused some alarm as some viewers had wondered if it might been one of our peregrines. Rest assured: they're OK.

Update 2: Below each post you'll now see a "Share" Icon. This lets you tell your friends about the content of this post via your choice of services, like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Delicious, etc. More on this in the New Year.

The more the merrier.....update

This morning both adults and one of the juveniles were all together on the Jurys Inn sign in Derby that faces east towards Nottingham - sitting out of the prevailing wind......
Apologies for the picture quality!

The juvenile is bottom left, the tiercel (male) top left, and the falcon (female) bottom right.

Nick B (DWT)

Ps It occurs to me subsequently that they won't perch there after dark when the JI signs are so brightly illuminated.....so perhaps it's not surprising they are back on the tower in the evening as reported by several commentators...

From Sokół wędrowny to Hebog Tramor

Wherever you live on this earth - whatever language you speak - welcome to our peregrine falcon blog.

If English is not your main language, you can now translate any page of this diary. Just look for the Google Translation tool on the top left-hand side of this page.*

During the busiest part of the 2009 peregrine breeding season we know that nearly 10,000 readers a week came to learn more about events on the peregrine nest platform on Derby Cathedral's stone tower. Even now this blog still receives almost 1,000 visits each week, whilst the webcams themselves get around 500 visits a day.

The map below shows the typical spread of blog readers around our planet. It's good to see some of you appearing nearly every week on these maps. The more distant you are from Derby, the more your little red dot stands out. It may be invidious to name names, but "Jennie in Hong Kong" and "Ann (Canada)" are just two of a number of regular readers and commenters who have managed to make the long journey to the City of Derby to see our birds in person.

It's hard for us to really understand how effective our family of peregrine falcons actually is at bringing people to Derby, though we know many of you have made the trip, often combining it with a chance to go shopping. So if your visit or stay in Derby is prompted by our birds, do please make a point of telling your hotel/taxi driver/shop assistant/tourism officer or restaurant exactly why you've come. Or tell us about your visit by emailing peregrines@derby.gov.uk

Sometimes those little red spots on the map are easier to notice than real visitors in the street! Follow this link for more on Derby tourist infomation.

We've long been intrigued by regular visits from someone near Honolulu in Hawaii, and possibly from Cook Island or some other seemingly remote spot in the South Pacific. You guys appear nearly every week, so welcome, whoever you are.

Of course, Peregrine Falcon is Falco peregrinus in any language, because scientists use one internationally agreed name. But if you've ever wondered what other common names are given to peregrines around the planet, here are just a few we've found.

• Sokół wędrowny
• Wanderfalke
• Vandrefalk
• Faucon pèlerin
• Halcón peregrino
• Falco pellegrino
• Slechtvalk
• Bayağı doğan
• Halcón peregrino
• Πετρίτης
• Sokol stěhovavý
• Сокол скитник
• Hebog Tramor

I wonder how long it will take someone to list which language is which!

*Update: Google's Translatoin Tool does seem to work with old browsers like Internet Explorer 6.0, but not with early versions of Firefox (eg version 2.0). You may need to upgrade your browser to use this tool.

The Jury's In.....

(Updated 10 Nov) Yesterday morning was fine and bright in Derby - if cold. Winter has arrived as you can see from the lack of leaves on the trees. Gulls were flying from their overnight roosts to feed along the river and perhaps in fields beyond the city's boundaries. A grey wagtail flew by and I heard the calls of a mistle thrush too.

Both adults were on the cathedral tower. The male was on the platform. While I was looking for prey remains he made the 'ee-chup' call above my head. I looked up and saw him glide from the platform, circle round and then fly over to the new hotel where he proceeded to sit on the Y of Jurys....just as Joyce S of Derby had also reported. I've also seen the female again on St Mary's, the roman catholic church, so it seems our Church of England birds are sampling both catholicism and now mammon....

There was not much in the way of prey remains - just a few snipe, lapwing and various thrush feathers.

The project team had a useful meeting with the hotel manager last week, discussing various ways in which the hotel might help the project next year. The birds themselves clearly haven't waited for a meeting- they've taken advantage of its presence already!

Nick B (DWT)

Postscript: The video below was taken in May 2009 as Jurys Inn, Derby, was nearing completion. It compresses 90 minutes down into 75 seconds, and shows our adult falcon looking out over the hustle and bustle of city life below. (Warning: Don't play the audio too loud!!)

Praise from London; Film from Italy

The newly formed London Peregrine Partnership has an excellent website, well worth a browse. In particular, go to their 'Peregrines on the web' page where they say (completely unprompted):

"The Derby Cathedral site is by far the best in the UK, with regular updates, good notes and some excellent pictures."


Obviously we knew this anyway but it great when someone else 'in the business', so to speak, thinks so too!
Well done that man at the museum - you all know who he is! What a star!

Herewith also the photo of the church in Exeter where peregrines have nested for many years and which was the stimulus for setting up our cameras back in 2006/7. You can't see the nest site with the cameras trained on it because it's round the other side of the base of the spire - and anyway, the annoying peregrines have decided to nest inside a window completely out of view both from cameras or the ground!

Update: Our own web cams are down at the moment, as you probably know. We now know where the fault lies, and are waiting for an engineer to arrange to visit the Cathedral to repair the wireless link connecting us to The Silk Mill museum. Please bear with us.
Meanwhile here is a lovely YouTube video made by Paulo Taranto of the life of urban peregrines in Bologna, Italy. (Watch for the zoom shot with the policeman)

Nick B (Derbyshire Wildlife Trust)

Brief flirt with catholicism?

( Update 2nd Nov. We are aware of a power failure affecting our webcams today. We will try and restart our equipment over the next 24 hours)

The peregrines have switched to their usual winter diet already. This morning I found three redwing heads and one of a fieldfare below the tower, as well as a common snipe's beak. As you can see, most of its skull has gone - the brains are rich in protein.

Redwings and fieldfares are absent from Derbyshire in summer, returning here from Scandinavia each winter, some never to return of course.

I also saw a peregrine (the falcon) perched on the tower of St Mary's, the roman catholic church a few hundred metres away from the cathedral. This is the first time I've ever seen a peregrine on that tower, which is much lower than the cathedral tower but, nevertheless, a high vantage point for a peregrine. Sorry the pic is blurred - taken from the car while traffic lights were on red!

She didn't stay there long as it happened....

Nick B (DWT)