The Blog! The Blog!

Screenshot of our new blog design. Tell us what you think.

Having recently gained Heritage Lottery Fund support for the Derby Cathedral Peregrine Project, one of the jobs we're now doing is redesigning our blog.



We are going to want to accommodate  the new content we'll be developing over the next year or so. We also want to incorporate our new logo which has been designed by our latest partner, Derby Cathedral Quarter.

The Bells! The Bells!

-Have you listened to the new video feed from our tower webcams, yet?

If so, you will no doubt have heard the cathedral bells ring out every quarter hour. But have you listened at 9am, 12 noon or 6pm when the automated carillon plays its tune?


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Our brand new live video and audio stream is just the first element to be delivered as part of our Heritage Lottery-funded scheme to enhance everyone's experience of

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Derby's Peregrine falcons. As well as letting everyone hear our peregrines, it seems to capture the very heartbeat of our city in the rhythm chimed out by the cathedral bells. We are very grateful to SERCO for their help in configuring this stream for us, which up till now was only available to your Project Team. SERCO are amongst the first of a new wave of supporters to be joining us to help deliver our HLF targets over the next few years. But more on these developments later.
Well, Derby Cathedral is inviting you to find out more about this unique form of music-making at its annual Bellringer’s Open Day, which is taking place on Saturday 25th August.

During the day, visitors to the Cathedral will be able to tour the tower, watch bell ringing demonstrations and try ringing a real bell under careful supervision.

Doors to the Cathedral tower will be open from 10am – 2pm and admission is just £3 for adults and £2 for children (only the over eights can be admitted).


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Visitors on the 11.30am tower climb will get the chance to watch and hear the clock carillon in action and those unable to make the climb to the top of the tower will be able to enjoy an exhibition of photographs of the bells just inside the Cathedral.

Developed in England in the 17th century, change ringing is a unique form of music-making, which forms a significant part of English culture. Yet it remains taken for granted by most people – for instance, have you ever though how people ring a bell weighing the equivalent of a car with such acute accuracy?

Derby Cathedral boasts ten bells in its tower one of which, the tenor, was cast in 1520 and is still in use almost 500 years later, making it one of the oldest working objects in Derby.

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If you are one of our many overseas blog readers,  

or can't come to Derby on the 25th, 

you might like to see videos of the carillon in action 

and find out more about them here

Second Post

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Download a 20Mb video file of our 2012 peregrine fledging from he nest

First Test Post

This, quite simply, is a sandbox - a site used for testing different features before going live elsewhere.
The text content below is not significant, and has been copied from earlier postings  purely for visual effect.

Species identified recently have included several woodcock, teal and snipe and single collared dove, redshank, water rail and knot, the feathers of these latter birds kindly identified by Ed Drewitt at Bristol Museum. In addition, Nick Moyes found what he thought was a dunlin corpse at the top of the tower in mid-December (photo above). To me it looked rather grey and long winged but in the absence of a head (the dunlin, not me!), identification was a bit more tricky!

The problem was further complicated by the fact that its wing measured 126mm, some10 mms longer than 'normal' dunlin wings - but exactly that of another small wading bird called a sanderling. However, my hopes of adding this species to the growing Derby prey list were quickly dashed when I discovered something I suppose I should have known- namely that sanderling, uniquely among small waders, have no hind toes - which this bird certainly did have. Surfing the net to see if any dunlins have longer wings, I found an article about those trapped on autumn migration in Israel and this indicated that some birds have longer wings - the longest being 130mm. Meanwhile, I sent photos of the wing and tail to Ed and he quickly confirmed it as a dunlin, possibly from Siberia!

The photo left shows a dunlin's wing from Ed's collection.

Glancing quickly through recent records on the local bird watchers website, I could find only one dunlin reported from the vicinity of Derby - namely on at Aston on Trent Gravel Pits sometime in late November. The dunlin is indeed a rare bird inland in winter and indeed in summer too. Now, Nick's tower-top bird was fresh when he found it on 10th December so the records don't really tie up unless the Aston bird was a long-stayer. Alternatively, and perhaps just as likely, one of the peregrines grabbed it as it flew over Derby by night.....along with the knot (and in previous years, a mid-winter bar tailed godwit, turnstone and two further knot). Could these birds have been making nocturnal commuting flights between feeding sites on estuaries on the West and East coasts of the UK, entirely unseen by Derbyshire's oh-so-diurnal bird watchers? Who knows!



Anyway, since someone asked for the complete prey list of the 46 bird species and one mammal found at Derby Cathedral since 2005, here it is: mallard - teal - gadwall - ruddy & tufted ducks woodcock - common & jack snipe - dunlin - knot redshank - lapwing - golden plover bar & black tailed godwit - whimbrel - turnstone quail - water rail - little grebe - moorhen common & arctic tern - black headed gull jay - jackdaw - crow - magpie - pied wagtail swift - little owl - fieldfare - redwing - blackbird song & mistle thrush - great spotted woodpecker robin - skylark - chaffinch - goldfinch - starling wood pigeon - feral pigeon - collared dove - waxwing and one brown rat!

With HLF funding, we are now able to develop and enhance our social media presence.