Osprey's return for 2012 Season!

As many of you may have read the Aberfoyle Osprey season is just about to begin. This year for the first time ever we are showing three live nests, two of which are being shown through HD. We have already had ospreys on all three nests and signs of attempted mating between pairs.

On nest site 1 (the nest that we have shown in previous years) we have already seen the return of Red 6A (our female from 2006 - 2010) who failed to return to the nest at the beginning of the 2011 season, but was seen on site later in the year. She seems to have been joined by a metal ringed male, whom we presume is the infamous male from the last few years.

For those of you that want to follow the action minute by minute we will be tweeting @aberfoyleosprey and also Facebooking at www.facebook.com/aberfoyleospreys. We are also hoping to get the webcam link up and running this week, sorry for the delay in this :-)

Other sightings and live cameras currently on show at the David Marshall Lodge Visitor Centre include Barn Owls, Red Squirrels and for the last few weeks we have been catching a glimpse of a Pine Marten, but we are keeping our eyes fixed on the osprey nests as another season at Aberfoyle begins!

It must be love!

Well our ospreys are certainly experiencing the Scottish weather today with rain and high speed winds to tackle. It shouldn't be to long now before we start to see the first egg hatching, it will be 37 days on the 30th May ( a week today) since the first egg was laid.

I just thought that I would let you know about something that has been happening over the last few weeks on the nest that shows our new osprey pair are defiantly in love....

As with any other osprey pair its the male that is doing the fishing while the female is incubating the eggs on the nest. As we would expect the male is bringing the fish in headless having taken his share leaving the rest for the female. Usually what should happen is the female would fly away to eat the rest of the fish, while the male does a little incubation. But this is where our tale takes a twist!

Our female is flying off to perch on a nearby tree then bringing back some of the fish to give back to the male, kind of saying "Thanks I've had enough now would you like some more?"! How sweet :-)

P.S All 9 blue tit eggs hatched on Thursday and we currently still have 3 barn owl chicks, who are growing rather rapidly!

A new female for Aberfoyle ospreys?

As reported last week, since the return of our "trouble maker" bird from last season, neither yellow OU nor green DX have been spotted on the nest. Instead, the metal-ringed male osprey was seen on his own waiting for the return of last year's female, Red 6A. She still hasn't returned but the male's attention now seems to have been diverted to a new younger model in the shape of a 4 year old female, ringed white HA, who arrived on the nest on Friday. All we know about this new female is that she was hatched in the Tweed Valley, Scottish Borders in 2007. It is not especially unusual for female ospreys to venture slightly further afield from their birthplace in the hunt for a suitable nesting location. Hopefully white HA and metal ring are going to be our resident couple for the season as we have already had 4 different ospreys on the nest in the last 10 days! As many of you know there is also live viewing of Ospreys in the Tweed Valley. You can check out their blog at: http://tweedvalleyospreys.blogspot.com/ P.S One of our barn owl eggs has hatched, only four to go!

Lights, camera, action!

It's that time of year again! Our Osprey cameras are back up and running. Hurray! I have to admit that it brought back a lot of memories from last year when I saw the nest on camera today - Red 6A, Green DX, the intruder metal ringed bird, our change of nests half way through the season, Ozzy, Jemima and Fred and the many fish! I wonder what they have in store for us this year?

We are still awaiting on the arrival of our ospreys (as some of you will know, EJ from Loch Garten has already returned) but hopefully this should be within the next week. The David Marshall Lodge is now fully open so put down your newspapers, finish the housework and pop in and see how we are getting on.

Most of our other live cameras are up and running too, including our Barn Owl Box, where our female is currently sat on 5 eggs!

Winter Hits the Lodge!

The David Marshall Lodge has been hit by the recent Big Freeze, as have many parts of the UK; because of this the Lodge has been closed for many days. The good news is that we are now open!

Wildlife Watch currently has live cameras on Red Squirrels, Bird Feeders and recorded footage of the 2010 ospreys season, plus many other recordings of different species that you might find in the forest e.g. Pine Marten, Peregrine and Barn Owls!

This weekend is shaping up to be a busy one with Christmas Tree sales, Christmas crafts and the Rockin' Robin trail, so why not pop up and join in the fun!

Another osprey chick sees daylight!

Today the second osprey egg has been spotted on the nest. This means that because of the delay of recording the osprey nest the 2nd egg hatched on the 26th May at around 1pm. This is because the latest nest does not have a live linkto the David Marshall Lodge. Also we can only record up to 4 hours of footage at a time and because of this it does take us sometime to discover new happenings on the nest. Please bear with us.

The male osprey is living up to his job of bringing in fish with a plentiful supply of fish for both mother and children arrving at the nest throughout the day. On the other cameras in the Wildlife Viewing room we now have 3 very cute fluffy buzzard chicks, 2 fluff balls that are Barn Owl chicks and a plentiful supply of Great Tit chicks of which some are getting ready to fledge the nest.

Gearing up for the season

As you might have seen from our counterparts' blog at Tweed Valley, it's osprey breeding season once again.  Unlike Tweed Valley, though, here at Aberfoyle, we're still waiting for the birds to return to their nest.

The good news is that ospreys have been spotted close by, so we're keeping our fingers crossed that they'll soon be back on camera.

At David Marshall Lodge, the viewing room is open (10.00am - 5.00pm 7days) and the cameras are on - but at the moment, the only birds on view are the tits, busying themeselves in their nest box. 

Our other cameras feature tawny and barn owl nests, a bird feeder, and of course the osprey nest.

This year we're welcoming a new interpretation officer, Robert, who will be keeping us up to speed with what's going on throughout the season.

We'll be bringing you updates on the blog, but you can also sign up to our Twitter feed to get news too: http://www.twitter.com/fcscotland.

We hope to see you at David Marshall Lodge but if you can't visit, we'll try to keep you involved with our posts here.

Barn Owls are go!

Out of our 5 Barn owl chicks, 3 fledged.

The first fledged on Friday 31st July after flapping a lot and peering out of the Barn Owl box hole, and the other two had gone by the 5th August. The last 2 then returned to the box for a couple of days but now have not been seen for about a week.

Nest box update- fly away Peter fly away Paul

Our Great Tits all fledged successfully on the 4th June.

Our Blue Tits were another story! All 8 eggs hatched, although it was difficult to determine this at first as they were SO tiny. As they got bigger, it was easy to count the open gapes as their parents came in to feed them. One chick seemed to die in the box around the time of the very hot weather. Then on June 9th, I came in one morning to fine the blue tits at the top of the picture on the monitor rather than at the bottom as previously. Also, there only seemed to be 4 chicks! What had happened? Did a predator enter the nest box, knock the camera and eat the chicks? Maybe a stoat or weasel? Who knows? The remaining 4 chicks went on to successfully fledged on June 17th.

The Barn Owls are doing well although there now only seems to be 4 chicks. Food has seemed a little sparse of late, although one chick was seen trying to swallow a whole vole! Its possible that the 5th chick was eaten since food was scarce as no body has been seen in the box. How many will remain until the end?

Nest box update

Our Great Tits have hatched 6 chicks and one egg remains unhatched. These hatched about 1 week ago and are feathering up quite nicely.

The Blue tits have hatched just hatched on Tuesday but are so tiny I am unsure how many we have, at least 5.

The Barn owl definitely has 2 chicks and 2 eggs but whether there is a third egg or a third chick I was unable to see.

Cuckoos have been having population crashes and Springwatch has been asking for your Cuckoo sightings/calls. Look on their website for more info.

Eggs aplenty- although not ospreys!

So far on our live nest box cameras, we have:

• Barn Owl on 5 eggs
• Great Tit just hatched 6 chicks and one unhatched egg and
• Blue Tit on 7 eggs so far.

Nest box update

The Barn owls are now on 5 eggs and we have a Great Tit on 7.

Barn Owls

A quick update: the barn owls laid their third egg yesterday and both adults are in the box this morning as its very heavy rain.

Barn Owls now on

The live camera on the Barn Owl nest box is now up and running and they have gratified us with an egg on Friday 24th April and a second egg today!