Tuesday 15 May 2007

Birds for Real!

Click on image to enlarge Miraculous as it is to see our birds on the screen, there's nothing quite like watching an angry peregrine fly over your head chasing off a passing buzzard or flying up to the nest carrying food!
So, provided you live near enough (sorry to our foreign web-watchers, eg those of you in New Jersey who sent such a nice comment to the blog) please do come down to Derby and join us at the Watch Points organised by Derbyshire Wildlife Trust which will be running on Cathedral Green daily from 16th May. Weather permitting, we plan to be there with telescopes between 10am and 2pm each day.

Cathedral Green is situated at the back of the cathedral and from there we get good views up to the tower (though not into the platform of course). The Assembly Rooms multi-storey car park is just 100 metres down Full Street and there is on-street parking as well (metered except on Sundays). Buses run close by and the train station is only 20 minutes walk away.
If you have your own optics, do bring them along, but we will have a couple of telescopes for you to use, so don't worry if you haven't.
Last year, we had over 2000 visitors in less than three weeks. This year we plan to run the Watchpoint daily until the two chicks fledge in June....that is, if we can get enough volunteers helping us to run it! If you would be interested in helping, we need people able to stand for up to four hours on the green, helping visitors to get good views of the birds through the telescopes. If you could help, please phone Derbyshire Wildlife Trust on 01773 881188 and leave your name and phone number, or your email address and we'll get back to you. The office number has an answer machine running outside office hours.
To check if the watchpoint will be running, go to www.derbyshirewildlifetrust.com.
See you soon maybe?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excuse me, but is the youngster from lazst year still showing up from time to time? Does this one 'assist with the feeding'?
Thank you
J A

Peregrine Project Member (Nick M.) said...

The last we saw of the juvenile from last year was when it (she?) turfed the male off the eggs he was incubating and gave them a good inspection. See blog entries for April 6th and 11th.
We review much of the footage from the webcams and have seen nothing. But we welcome reports of unusual activity - please give us a date and time, and do it as soon as possible as our recordings are written over after 4 days.

Anonymous said...

these birds are amazing!!!!!!!