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!

Not Long Now!

Believe it or not in just over 2 months our ospreys should be back with us and we will be at the start of a brand new season. The are lots of improvements planned for the David Marshall Lodge Visitor Centre and because of this some of our outside areas/car park is currently closed off to visitors. The visitor centre itself though is still open (11th - 19th & 23rd - 26th Feb 10am - 4pm and 1st March, open 7 days) and while be eagerly anticipate the arrival of our ospreys we are seeing plenty of Red Squirrels and even a Pine Marten on our feeder cams.

There are some new exciting plans this year, which I will tell you more about soon. We were out last week checking that all our ospreys nest had survived some of the harshest winds for many years and while there is odd one or two needing a bit of work, on the whole things aren't looking to bad. All the electrics were also put in last week and hopefully we will be continuing our change over to HD, I'll keep you posted.

Live footage of the nest

UPDATE, 5.10pm - the camera is live from 10am - 5pm each day.

If you take a look at the right hand side of the blog you'll see that our images from the nest are no longer stills - we're now streaming live footage! These cracking pictures are being beamed directly from the osprey nest camera.

From 5pm this evening you can also view the nest camera on the main Aberfoyle ospreys website (www.forestry.gov.uk/aberfoyleospreys).

Enjoy!

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

Third time lucky for Aberfoyle Nest?

As many of you are already aware there has been a highly contested battle for the Aberfoyle osprey nest this season. It is only just over 2 weeks since the ospreys returned and we have already had 5 different ospreys on the nest (3 females and 2 males). We currently have a metal ringed male, who was the "trouble maker" last year, who kicked out the eggs at the beginning of May 2010 and a new female who is unusually totally unringed! This new female has been around since Saturday and things are looking promising. There has been lots of nesting material brought in as well as repeated mating taking place. It is a year ago tomorrow (Tuesday) that we had our first egg last year, so we shouldn't have long to wait, fingers crossed!

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!

3RD EGG HAS HATCHED!

Today I am reporting something that I never thought I would be saying this season. Our 3rd osprey egg has HATCHED! It was discovered this morning so we believe it hatched at some point over the weekend! Mother and chicks all seem to be doing well.

We are going to be running a competition to name this years chicks, so watch this space for details!

Red 6A is back!

Just a quick update to say our female red 6A is back on the nest with a new mate whose identity is yet to be confirmed. The new male is busy trying to impress our female with lots of fresh fish and has also brought plenty of sticks to spruce up the tired nest.

Help celebrate the ospreys return

Why not help us celebrate the return of the ospreys this Saturday, 17th April, at David Marshall Lodge.  Plenty of family activities - see the return of the ospreys information on the Forestry Commission Scotland website.

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.

Ospreys galore

Well although it looks like we aren't going to get any more eggs this year, we have had numerous ospreys approaching the nest. In fact we have managed to get 5 new ring numbers!

Three of these have turned out to be birds from other local nests that were hatched in 2004 or 2005. So this is probably the first year that some of them have come back, as osprey chicks normally stay in Africa for 3-4 years until they are mature enough to breed.

One of the rings has still to be identified and another came from a chick that was found caught in the fish cages at Lake of Menteith. This one came down to fish, got caught up in the netting and had to be rescued by the workers at the fishery. They put it to the side but when it was still there several hours later they called for help. The osprey has now been taken to a wildlife rescue centre and the last I heard it was holding its own. Apparently it has an injured elbow and shoulder, so may not be well enough to be re-released. The interesting thing about this bird was that although it didnt come anywhere near our nest, its sibling turned up there about the same time. This also means that 2 chicks survived the return journey when they say only 1 out of 3 normally do. Interesting stuff!

Even more interesting for our nest was that yesterday an unringed osprey turned up at the nest eating a fish. Could this be our resident male? The mystery deepens...

Web cam live at last

We've now got the web cam up and running, both here (on the right of the page) and a larger version on the main Aberfoyle Ospreys pages at http://www.forestry.gov.uk/aberfoyleospreys.

The camera is live from 10.00am to 5.00pm every day. It shows stills from the nest updated every couple of minutes, rather than a live stream, but it gives you a taste of what's going on.

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!

No eggs yet! :-(

The female has still been sitting low on the nest but there has been no changeover as yet, when the male has come in with a fish.
We are not impatient, are we?

All change... again!

The mating between Red 6A and the green-ringed male was improving and seemed to be going well all week. He was adding the occassional branch to the nest and bringing in fish, although I was a bit surprised by his laissez-faire attitude.

Then on Saturday, as soon as the cameras were on, it was an unringed male who was on the nest and green ring was nowhere to be seen. Was this our original bird or another unringed male? The fact our female was so relaxed with him indicated the former, and on checking footage from 2007, it is indeed our resident male. He is quite distinctive as he has 2 stripes coming up from each eye to the top of his head. A marking I have never seen before in another osprey.

It's funny how when you have resident birds together their behaviour just gels and things progress so much faster. This male is on a mission and keeps bringing stick after stick back to the nest. After being off for 2 days I notice a definite improvement in the nest; it is much more formed and is greener, having been lined with moss and lichen. The male has been successfully mating with the female all week and bringing numerous fish to her, including a jack pike. Now that this male is in, things seemed to have settled down on the nest with no other ospreys venturing in for a while now.

Now we can get on with the business in hand!

Menage a ...quatre?

On Monday when Red 6A arrived, the green ringed male tried to mate with her but she was having none of it and kept shrugging him off. She then did have a successful mating, but with which male we are unsure. It seemed too adept to be the green-ringed male and shortly after this mating he did try and was shrugged off again.

On Tuesday there was alot of to and fro'ing on the nest by Red 6A and the green-ringed male, with quite a few sticks brought in.

On Wednesday we finally got to see a fish being brought in by the green-ringed male. He was sitting eating it quite happily at the top of the nest when he dropped it. Red 6A, not one to miss an opportunity, nipped in and took the fish off to a nearby tree to eat it.

Shortly after when Red 6A was on the nest with green ring, another 2 birds joined the proceedings; the silver ringed male and an unringed bird. The latter was thought to be a male due to Red 6A's lack of response but could have been the previously unringed female. Talk about confusing!

Today there has been much nest building going on by Red 6A and green ring. However, although he keeps trying to mate with Red 6A, any attempt has been unsuccessful.

Nice to see you, to see you...

Well the nest was very quiet until midday when the unringed female appeared with the green ringed male and mating took place; more successfully than yesterday. The unringed female was food soliciting and the male kept flying off but was unsure as to what to do. So he returned with some moss and dried grass. Good boy!

Then at 2pm, the unringed female landed on the nest and was immediately chased off by another bird. A quick zoom revealed it was Red 6A! Welcome back our resident female, living up to her reputation of not standing for interlopers on her nest. :-)

Well, hello....!

This morning started with an empty nest but was soon filled by a fourth bird; an unringed osprey, which we thought was a male due to its very light markings. In a tree behind was a green ringed bird which we thought was the same one as yesterdays, which looked female due to a very brown chest patch. Then lo and behold, green ring flew down to the nest and landed on top of the unringed bird! Obviously identification by chest patches alone is not to be relied upon. Lol!

The unringed female was very receptive to advances with submissive posturing but poor green ring seemed out of his depth and tried to mate with her head! Then he landed beside her on the nest and adopted the mating posture of retracted talons and flat legs, with us thinking "but you have to get on top of her first!" Subsequent mating attempts proved just as bad with him approaching the female sideways and this remained the status for the rest of the day. He tried many times but no successful mating attempts occurred.

It will be interesting to see what happens tomorrow.