Church and Episcopal School

Application date for Young Organists’ Competition extended to Sat 7th June. See details here

Peregrine chicks weighed, measured and ringed, all three are healthy, developing well and getting around the nest box. See website and click Peregrine link. And yes, I’ve unofficially named them after their leg-rings HeCtor, HeBe & HeiDi!

Poster now available for Celebrity Recital by David Briggs, International Organ Virtuoso, to launch the our new Organ, on Monday 16th June at 7.30pm.

Opening organ concert on reconstructed organ formally in St Jude’s Church, Birmingham, where David’s grandfather was Organist, inspiring him as a child to learn to play and to improvise.

David Briggs – International Organ Virtuoso

It is a real coup for St Michael’s to have David Briggs come and formally open our newly installed pipe organ next month. It will be a thrilling opportunity to hear one of the world’s foremost organists perform pieces from J S Bach to Dukas’ the Sorcerer’s Apprentice (from Disney’s Fantasia), and to improvise a Symphony from themes suggested by the audience!

And a beautiful poster for the whole of our busy Festival Season.

Heritage & Music Festival 2014

We hope to see those who live near enough at St Michael’s as we celebrate.

Best regards, Richard.

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Female Peregrine feeding 3 chicks; 1 egg unhatched.

While one chick, possibly a male, is noticeably smaller than the other two, all seem to be feeding and growing well at this stage.

Apart from a 2-hour outage on May Morning when the streaming server had some maintenance, the live webcam footage on St Michael’s Website generously sponsored by Devon Birds has been running uninterrupted for over 3 weeks with intimate viewing of our Peregrine family day and night.

On this Blog, April was a record-breaking month with nearly 1100 views from 360 viewers. It’s also good to see the Young Organists’ Competition post getting some hits – let’s hope we get a few applications too.

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It was a wet and windy night but, with a touch of late night peregrinitis, it looked to me like one of the eggs had cracked around midnight and by 1am on the 27th the female was removing the shell and eating some of it, but nestling so well that I couldn’t see any chick. An automatic recording at 3.30am showed her removing a second shell and gave hints of some fluffiness under her breast.

At 8.30am Nick Dixon caught a swapover on the live webcam and saw 2 chicks and 2 eggs. At 12noon, accompanied by the church bell ringing for the Regina Coeli (Queen of Heaven), Kim confirmed this at another changeover of adult birds. Fittingly Sunday’s Mass setting was by William Byrd.

By 3.30pm I was suspecting maybe a third hatchling, and this was clear at 4.45pm when the female left the 3 chicks unattended in the nest for about 10 minutes. Two chicks were stretching upwards and squauking, with the third smaller chick less vocal; two female and a male?

It was a little worrying that the adults kept the chicks warm but showed no sign of attempting to feed them at all on Sunday, though they looked quite comfortable and active. Today, Monday, feeding has started with breakfast and tea observed; it will be a day or 2 more before we know whether the 4th egg will hatch.

Inside the Spire of St Michael & All Angels

We are hugely grateful to Devon Birds for sponsoring the live-video-streaming. Please also visit their website to learn about the wider bird scene in Devon.

It’s not cheap (sorry for the pun) to run the streaming, so a little donation to one or both of St Michael’s and Devon Birds would be much appreciated.

Congratulations also to the educated Peregrines of Nottingham Trent University who hatched 3 eggs on St George’s Day, last Wednesday; they now have 4 chicks.

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Keeping the eggs warm

This is one of the main deliverables from the HLF Project, so it is great to have achieved it. Picture quality is best during daylight hours, becoming monochrome after dark.

Go to the St Michael’s Mount Dinham website home page
http://www.stmichaelsmountdinham.org.uk
click on the Peregrine area, and then the “play” triangle. The feed will time out after 10 minutes but can be restarted. The webpages are optimised for Google Chrome and Firefox browsers, but should perform ok for Internet Explorer.

Live streaming is not cheap, so we are very grateful to Devon Birds for sponsorship. http://www.devonbirds.org/home
Getting BT Openreach to connect a phone line to our Grade 1 listed building and route it to join up with the camera feed from the spire, plus replacing the camera fried by the January lightning strike, has rather exhausted the HLF money budgeted for this part of the Project, so any donations via our MyDonate button on the website would also be most welcome.

Currently the female and occasionally the male are busy incubating their 4 eggs, laid between 20th and 26th March; if all goes well we would expect the eggs to hatch sometime during the week after Easter, between 21st and 28th April.

Last year all 3 eggs hatched within about 12 hours on 28th April, a lengthy 34 days after the 3rd egg was laid. Laying was a day or two earlier this year but with 4 eggs things may be different.

At the risk of sounding like Trumpton Fire Station, many thanks to Jason, Nick, Kim, Lizzie, Andy, Andy, Mark and Andrew, plus Eric and the BT engineers, for making this possible. Camera installation is by Wildlife Windows Ltd

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