We love to hear about your wildlife stories; what birds or other wildlife have been visiting your garden?
If you love birds of prey, two great places to visit this summer would be Rutland Water for the Ospreys and Derby Cathedral for Peregrine falcons. Both these are established breeding grounds for their respective birds. You can also watch webcams set up over the nesting sites to keep up with the latest developments.
WEBCAM LINKS
Derby Cathedral Peregrine webcam (other views available)
Rutland Water Osprey webcam
Nottingham Trent University Peregrine webcam
If you want to view these webcams on a non-flash enabled device such as an iphone/ipad or some Android smartphones, then you can use the “Puffin Browser” app downloadable from the itunes app store or from Google play (there is a free version which you can try first).
The snowy weather on Monday brought lots of Blackbirds and Thrushes into the school grounds. I popped out to have a quick look at lunch time and managed to count 7 Blackbirds, 5 Song Thrushes and 1 Redwing. I think they must have been enjoying the apple cores the children left after their break time fruit snack!
Ospreys started arrive back at Rutland Water last week. What a snowy welcome for them, quite different from their wintering grounds in North Africa! The Nottingham Peregrines laid their first egg yesterday and it won’t be long now before the Derby Cathedral Peregrines start laying theirs. Having a look at the Derby webcams this morning however, they would be well advised to hold off until the snow storms finish!
I think the peregrine falcons on Derby cathedral are really nice because I’ve just been there and seen 2 falcons in their nest.
Keep watching them LT; you might be lucky and spot an egg soon!