First peregrine egg laid in the UK this year!

As regular vistors to our webcam will know, our falcons are currently incubating two eggs, one of which is believed to be the first peregrine egg to be laid egg in a monitored nest in the UK this year.

The first egg was laid at 8.18 am on Wednesday 14 March and was spotted by viewers watching the nest via our live webcam. The second one was laid earlier today at 11.47 am. Video footage of the both eggs being laid is now available, alongside some other highlights from the year so far, on the ‘2012 footage’ section of www.ntu.ac.uk/falcons.

Speaking about the new arrivals, Erin McDaid of Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust commented: “We have been watching the peregrines around the nest for some weeks now and we had been speculating whether we might get an egg earlier than in previous years. However, we did not expect the first egg to arrive nine days earlier than in 2011! Having been in touch with a number of other peregrine projects across the UK our birds appear to have laid the 1st recorded egg in the country.

Whilst we have no way of knowing if peregrine’s elsewhere on nests without camera have laid eggs yet, this is very early record and it’s exciting to have the 1st egg that people can see round the clock 24hrs a day. Depending upon how many eggs the female lays we could well get the 1st chick of the year too, due in about a month.”

The new HD cameras, situated 40m up on Nottingham Trent University’s Newton building, have proved to be a big success since their launch in February. The arrival of the first egg saw a dramatic rise in numbers viewing the camera taking the number of views in the month since launch to a staggering 82,000.

Mr McDaid continued: “Now that we have an egg in the nest we are expecting even more people to view the camera on a regular basis and we look forward to sharing the trials and tribulations of our city centre pair with hundreds of thousands of wildlife lovers over the coming months.”