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!

Could this be the end?

Hi All,

As many of you will have seen on our new live web cam our female has not been on the nest incubating her three eggs for the last few days. This comes as a great disappointment to all of us here at the David Marshall Lodge as the eggs were due to start hatching yesterday.

We are still unsure of the reasons why the bird has stopped incubating her eggs, but we are fairly confident that it isn't disturbance as both male and female have been spotted on the nest. Unusually though the female is sitting on the side of the nest and every now and again she will touch one the eggs.

We are trying to say positive but things aren't looking very hopeful, but I will keep you all informed.

Robert

A bit battered but doing fine!

Just a quick update to say that after the hurricane strength winds on Monday I am happy to report that our osprey nest and ospreys both stood tight and battled against the winds. Our female is still incubating on the three egss which are due over the weekend. Our male is struggling to fish at the moment due to the ribbles that are being caused by the winds but he is being persistent, which is a good sign!

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!

Eggs for Easter!

Hi Folks,
Hot off the press (or the TV screen!) our female osprey has just laid her 2nd egg of the season. It was laid at around 15.30 this afternoon (Monday 25th April). This is around 60 hours after the first which is normal for ospreys.

Unusually our male bird has taken quite a fancy to incubating the eggs!! This is considered the females role.

We will keep you posted over the next few days.

Robert

EGG NUMBER ONE!

I can now confirm that our unringed female has laid her first egg! It was spotted at 10.17am this morning (Saturday 23rd April). We believe it was laid at some point over night. Both male and female have been spotted incubating the egg this morning. We will keep you up to date over the next few days to let you know how things are going!

P.S. Also just to let you know our Barn Owl has successfully hatched all her five chicks!

Web cam up and running!

Just to let you all know that you can now watch the happenings of the Aberfoyle ospreys from the comfort of your home. Our online web cam is know up and running meaning up can keep up to date with the ospreys throughout the season. The camera will take a picture of the nest every 2 minutes between the hours of 10am and 5pm. These will automatically upload to the web page.

These images can be viewed at: http://www.forestry.gov.uk/website/forestry.nsf/byunique/infd-72ufv3

We are hoping that our female will be laying eggs soon, she has been showing signs over the last few days, so fingers crossed not long now!

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!

Ospreys have landed!

We can now confirm that ospreys have returned! At around 9.45am this morning Yellow OU, our female from a few year back, and Green DX were spotted back on our live nest site! They have already been seen mating and sorting out the nest. Yellow OU has not been seen on this nest site for number of years, and successfully raised chicks here back in 2005. Red 6A our usual female hasn't been seen yet, and neither has our troublemaker from last year, the metal ringed male! I think there are still a few more twists and turns in the story before we even see eggs being incubated. Stay tuned for more info!

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!

I can't keep up!

Our ospreys have rarely been at the nest the past 2 weeks. When there have been ospreys on the nest it has been our Red 6A female and Green-ringed male. He has been trying to mate with her but she has been reticent to stay near the nest.

Today however, was the best sightings I have seen of the birds all week. And there was a surprise in store. A pair of ospreys were on the nest alarm calling and mantling against and intruder osprey and I was trying to identify who was who on the nest. Yes, there was the female Red 6A and surely the male was the green-ringed male but I couldnt see the Darvic. Later on I realised why, when I saw he had no Darvic ring but only a metal ring. Welcome back the silver ringed male. The 2 birds mated and the female was hanging around the nest alot more than normal, so hopefully this will be a positive sign.

Too many cooks.......

Everything was going quite well with the silver-ringed male and our female for about a week until a green-ringed male came in and took over. This male was with her for a couple of days mating and feeding her but on Saturday, she seemed to be off the nest alot but not too long for the eggs. Then on Sunday 3rd May, she was off the nest practically all day. An osprey kept coming into the nest but couldn't be identified whereas our female was sitting on the dead tree off to the left for the majority of the day. She seemed totally non-plussed and didn't react at all to the bird on the nest. No alarm calling or food-soliciting, she just sat and preened and preened. From this behaviour I can only suppose that one of the males, probably the green-ringed, had kicked the eggs out the nest. She had been so tight on the nest previously and hadn't been off it for long at any stage at all, so seems strange that she would just suddenly decide to go off,unless the eggs had been removed.

Since then the female and green ringed male have been mating but seem reticent to stay at the nest for any length of time. She really needs to lay again before the end of May if we have any chance of having chicks this season. Stay posted!

Its not good news........but there is a sliver (ringed) lining!

Our resident male osprey (unringed) has not been seen for about 10 days now and at about the time he disappeared the female appeared to be sitting on eggs. As said in my previous post she is sitting tight most of the time but is getting on and off the nest to chase intruders. This is not good due to the risk to the eggs.

The silver-ringed male has at last been seen providing her with fish. He flew in on Monday with a fish, gave it to her and she flew off. He looked as if he was going to take over incubation but stood in the nest cup then didn't sit down. He poked around in the nest and I watched him with baited breath, half expecting any eggs in the nest to come flying out any minute. Instead he stood there for a moment then took off. The female was sitting in a dead tree to the left and sat there eating her fish for 5 minutes then flew down to the nest with the fish and continued to eat it there. I breathed a sigh of relief and was at least glad to see that she is getting fed. The silver-ringed bird continues to try and mate with her but she is not receptive.

On Tuesday a green-ringed bird landed on the nest and the silver-ringed bird was very quick to defend the female and the nest and actually locked talons with the intruding male. The female joined in quite aggressively and forced them both off the nest. I haven't seen such physical contact in a long time. Ospreys like most animals tend to avoid aggressive contact as it may result in injury; which can sometimes be too costly.

To say our female is having a hard time is to put it mildly, trying to incubate the unringed male's eggs, while trying to defend the nest, most of the time alone. The only good thing is she is actually being fed by the silver ringed male, which is allowing her, for the moment, to continue to sit tight.

I have asked that the cameras be switched from the overview camera to the nest cup camera so we can definitely see if we have eggs and how many. This hopefully should be done today or tomorrow. I'll let you know when I do.

Confused? You will be!

Sorry for the delay in updating the blog but things have been rather confusing of late. On the 17th April the female looked good for laying an egg but there hadn't been a changeover; normally the first definite behaviour that there is an egg. Then midweek the unringed male (our resident bird) seemed to have vanished!

Shortly after that we had various other birds coming into the nest including a green-ringed bird and a silver-ringed male. The silver-ringed male seems to have taken over the female and is seen with fish, but it's uncertain as to whether the female is being fed by him or by another male.

The silver-ringed bird keeps attempting to mate with Red 6A but is always unsuccessful. Red 6A, although she appears to have an egg in the nest (she looks like she is incubating and turning an egg), is also leaving the nest for short periods probably because her regular male is not around. Today is not proving to shed any light as the female is tight on the nest due to the heavy rain and no other birds have been seen. Hopefully this week will clarify things and won't result in an egg being kicked out the nest!