Saturday 31 May 2008

Nearly there!

Yesterday I thought the egg had hatched! The male came onto the nest about 10am and the female didnt want to change with him. She then sat ALL day without the male visiting the nest. 6 HOURS! I thought, she MUST have hatched one. She was fidgetting most of the day, looking down into the nest cup and nibbling on something. It looked very promising. Then at 16:30 the male arrived with a fish. What was going to happen next, would she feed a chick? No, she promptly got up took the fish and flew off. The male then took over incubation. Bah!
Today, I thought it's 38 days. It MUST be today. But it seemed to be a reversal of roles today. At about 2pm the male came and took over incubation. He then had to wait for 2 hours for the female to come back. What on earth was going on? So at close of play today, still no hatched egg!
Surely it must be tomorrow.......

Friday 23 May 2008

All quiet

Only five days to go until our first egg can hatch!

Other nest sites have had their first chick but we are still awaiting ours.
The male and female have been sharing incubation duties, although it is always the female that does the overnight shift.

We have had some osprey intruders in yesterday and both male and female were heard to be alarm calling throughout the day. One intruder even landed close to the nest.

Today a crow was harassing the birds and eventually flew off but came straight towards the camera! The picture from the camera was then bouncing up and down and we can only assume the crow had landed on the top of it.

Friday 16 May 2008

The story so far....

Ospreys were first sighted at Aberfoyle in the first weeks of April. Our "usual suspects" returned about the 13th/14th April.

Yellow OU our old female returned to the nest first but, as has happened the last four years, She was ousted by Red 6A.

Red 6A went on to mate with an unringed male who we assume to be her partner from previous years and on April 23rd she laid her first egg.

Unfortunately our female did such a good job of building up the nest, that she has now obscured the nest cam on the edge of the nest and we cant see her eggs (or anything else for that matter!). We are assuming, the female has laid three eggs,as per usual and the first egg should be due to hatch about the 28th-31st of May, after 35-38 days incubation.

Aberfoyle Ospreys 2008 -New Staff

Welcome to the Aberfoyle Ospreys and sorry for the delay to the Osprey Blog.

My name is Andrea Williams and I am the newly appointed Information and Education Officer working at David Marshall Lodge for the RSPB and Forestry Commission partnership. I previously worked for 6 years with the ospreys at Loch of the Lowes and updated the osprey diary there, so ospreys are a bit of a passion of mine.

If anyone has any questions regarding the Aberfoyle Ospreys, please dont hesitate to get in touch. My volunteers and I will do our best to keep you updated